I missed that but does it even matter? Like i was to into the fights to even care when they would end imo sekiro fights are the most thrilling when u have someone like the corrupted monk i could tell just from design that it was my favorite boss
@@dasty5228 I mean, if you're gonna critique the game but make completely untrue statements like "the closer the enemies' posture is to breaking the slower it recovers" while not realizing that posture recovery is tied to health, then it gives the impression that the critic didn't understand the game at all. Personally I think if you're gonna do a serious critique of something, you should understand its design mechanics and principles.
@@Churahm I'd argue his entire video is based on the assumption that there is only 1 correct way to play, his way, and if the game didn't conform to his liking then that part of the game was bad. Most of his arguments are assumptions on how the game was designed, but he has no way on know why From Soft designed it in that way. It's just another clickbait video from a From Soft video essay youtuber.
Lone shadow duel boss is only duel boss if you choose enter from the window which is the wrong way. Game punishes you for skipping important places by making it 2v1 if you ran past and grappled everywhere. But it doesn't take the option away from you. The correct way enter is from the behind(from the inside of the castle) and stealth kill the first one. You may choose to use ninjutsu on that guy to make it 2v1 against the boss.
I think this is a level design problem. The window should have been locked so you can't get in from the outside. Because this two-enemy fight in such a small room doesn't make any sense. At least with the apes, I can run 200 meters away to the other end of the cave.
I’m confused why he handicapped himself when he played this game, the game tells you to use items pretty blatantly, firecrackers, snap seed, divine confetti, your arm prosthetic are SUPPOSED to be used so you’re not trying to deflect a bull that punishes you for doing so
One note: the mechanical purpose of the Lady Butterfly illusion attack is an opportunity to refill a bit on spirit emblems. When I first fought Lady Butterfly I still sucked at the game and wasted a bunch of spirit emblems because I let the fight drag on and let posture recover. It also doesn’t help that you start with a low amount of maximum spirit emblems.
In Sekiro, enemy posture depletes slower when they have less health. The corrupted Monk is much easier if you focus on getting its health low before going for a posture kill. There were multiple instances in your footage where I saw you deflecting instead of taking an opportunity to attack. For example, you can sidestep the jump attack to get a few hits in instead of deflecting. Maybe you figured this out on your own but just didn't use any footage.
1:24:00 the solution to the multi fight is to enter from the other direction and stealth kill the other enemy, which also gives the opportunity to use puppeteer to turn it into an ally for the fight, you’re supposed to think “wow this fight feels impossible right now” and then use the tools at your disposal to problem solve and make the fight manageable
exactly what i did for the fight with the Seven Spears dude (Shume Masaji Oniwa) near the end of the game, who has a pretty tough enemy right next to him. I put in a good amount of attempts just trying to fight both at the same time, which made it so satisfying and relieving when I figured out I could use puppeteer and make the fight 10x easier
This is a solution, but stealth is a bit jank. Enemies spot you very easily, and resetting them after you fail is slow/annoying. (Esp. after the first playthrough where it's no longer a new encounter.)
@@AshoreNevermore this specific encounter is extremely easy for the stealth kill. you just hug the wall and walk behind him and he wont notice you 19/20 times
During that entire Corrupted Monk rant I was just like "Did he forget that enemies also have a normal health bar, and that Corrupted Monk only has one health bar?"
@@MaltexGaming Okay, so the game never states where he gets it aside from Genichiro, my best guess is he took it from him then killed him with it but that part is speculation.
Love the review but your struggles with the corrupted monk were almost entirely created by your lack of information about the game and I don't think she should change at all. First of all, idk if you misspoke but bosses posture regain is based on their health bar not their posture bar. At 50% bosses posture recovery is slowed, and at 25% health bosses will stop recovering posture entirely. (I think this is why chained ogre exists, to make you chip away at health bar and observe it's relation to posture. His posture also wont recover while hes burning, which some npcs tell you to try.) About her recovering posture too quickly, because you mostly ignored prosthetics you might not know the shuriken is great for keeping up posture damage from a distance. There's also a skill that gives you a follow up slash which comes out way faster and has more range than a dashing light attack. Just by the way you talked about the experience system I would bet you probably undervalue all the skills and tools available to wolf. I'm not even gonna mention snap seeds because realistically most players won't recognize the monk is a spirit, but the point is I think most players severely underestimate the power of certain prosthetics and skills. And more importantly how fucking sick some of them look High monk is the only way I dodge sweep attacks now lmao
It's no wonder you had so much trouble with the corrupted monk, you played the whole game before fighting the 2nd to 3rd REAL boss, because you apparently forgot you had a grappling hook, I hope you at least realized you could increase your attack power, I know how much the souls community hates reading after all
From what I’m seeing here, your issues with the game all stem from your own personal decision to not use the prosthetics, also leading to a lack of understanding the game mechanics. I’ll break it down here. I’m aware my comment won’t be seen by many, but if you do read it I’d love a response and a legitimate discussion. 1. Prosthetics are meant to be used, and they largely do not trivialize the boss fights at all. If you google what specific timings, combos, or “cheese” strats you can use with the prosthetics, then yes, they make the game too easy. But if you just experiment with them and use common sense? They add a bit of extra combat variety to the game and make boss fights marginally easier without trivializing them. For example, flame vent against the ape or the giant. Great way to build fire damage. Firecrackers are a great way to stop your enemy and get a few hits in, and are fairly effective against every boss in the game. Use the axe for some extra damage. Loaded spear does a ton of posture damage to the guardian ape and gives a sick animation. You can decide to play without these tools, but using a self-imposed handicap to say the game is “too hard” is wrong. And then saying it’s too easy with these prosthetic tools is just outright inaccurate, as again, it’s only too easy if you choose to employ cheese strats. The game itself encourages you on multiple occasions to do whatever it takes to win, as Shinobi are known for underhanded tactics. You’re allowed to stealth, use hit-and-run, or prosthetics to help yourself out. The beauty of this game is that it’s hard and unforgiving, so you can throw every tool in your arsenal at bosses and mini-bosses to try to get through it without making the game too easy. 2. Fights are not useless at all. They give you money, for… prosthetics. You chose not to use said prosthetics, and that’s on you, but that doesn’t make it a bad design choice. That just means you played the game a different way than the devs intended. Plus, these fights allow you to get skills, many of which are extremely useful and definitely worth grinding for. You get certain combat arts, extra spirit emblem usages, stronger healing gourds, a better mortal draw, and more. Fights also give spirit emblems, which is helpful if you’re running low and helps keep your count high, as they are consumables. Lastly, they give a good amount of practice. And fighting in this game is so fun that I don’t see why you wouldn’t fight enemies. In fact, listing out all of this has made me realize that Sekiro really gives MORE reason to fight enemies than most other games. Sure, the leveling system is gone, but the fact that skills, prosthetics, spirit emblems and multiple consumables are directly tied to fighting gives you plenty of reason to fight, whereas on repeat playthroughs of Bloodborne I find myself sprinting past every fight. 3. The multi-fight complaint is, once again, a self-imposed issue. The multi-fights are obviously made for you to use Shinobi tactics to beat them. In the example of the Lone Shadowmen double fight, you can easily sneak into the room and stealth deathblow the other guy to make it a 1v1. Or even better, you can equip the puppeteer Ninjitsu (which you have to have at this point in the game) to make the second guy fight on your side against the mini-boss. This is applicable to many fights in the game.
Isshin’s third phase is easier than the second because you can just use the lightnings to chop off half of his health, then the posture goes down like nothing.
This guy really didn’t understand the game’s mechanics at all…. Also why would it be hard to pronounce Gyobu Masataka Oniwa….? 🤨 He literally screams it at you.
I think the bull is meant to be chased or run around it in circles - teaching you the important mechanic that wolf is basically as fast as any enemy and never gets tired. I used this tactic on the apes and demon of hatred. The bull in fountainhead palace was taken down super easily this way along with some firecrackers.
I didn't even use firecrackers. Just drop the lock on and constantly dodge attack towards his rear and he never hits you. He was the easiest boss for me actually. Generally for fromsoft games, if you're stuck, try not locking on.
@@resm-oe9ji even if you maintain lock the bull is best fought by chasing it down rather than allowing it to chase you down, hit the ass in the ass is the winning tactic for sure!
I feel like everything you say you dont like are reasons i think the game is great. You cant level your way through problems, and you cant change a build to abuse boss mechanics. The combat is tailor made around one way of fighting. One highly refined singular system, and expects you to learn it. And the more you do what the game wants, the more you learn, and the better it feels. Yes, at the start when you dont understand Sekiro and you try to force the game to play like a souls game, it feels terrible. Downright unfair, but thats the point. Not to be unfair, but to force you to learn. This isnt a souls game, and you need to learn how to play me from scratch. And then you have that moment where it all just clicks with you. You get it. And learning the bosses becomes the most rewarding experience in any game. Not just beating them. You learn to love learning like no other game.
One detailed I saw in cutscenes is that wolf is rusty at the start of the game and fumbles pulling his sword out of the sheath but at the end of the game he does it perfectly and is completely focused on the fight that he doesn’t notice that Kuro faints behind causing some leaves to fly across the bottom right corner of the screen
Bro, the ninja multi-fight boss battle is meant to be played by doing the ninjutsu technique to make a puppet of the first ninja by using stealth at first. Then it becomes a 2v1 in your favor.
1:46:18 the Genichiro mixup gave me problems too, and after dying to that mixup for the 15th time I realized you could see the glint on his blade to judge whether it was a sweep or a thrust. If the glint is under him, it’s a thrust, if it’s behind him, it’s a sweep. 46:07 funny story, my friend also did ashina depths first, and after running out of divine confetti for the corrupted monk, quit the game forever. I’ve been trying to get him back into it forever but he won’t budge. Also I love your style or critique, keep up the good work!
It's interesting, listening to everyone take on the game. What I thought was unfair or impossible turned out just to be my misunderstanding of the mechanics. By the end of the game I could enter flow states like vegeta going super Sayian and will it was crazy.
I get the frustration of having to clear out a dozen enemies before fighting the mini boss and I do think that’s a little excessive, but I was able to find ways to clear out all the enemies without taking much damage before the boss, so it can definitely be done but if you die to the boss and have to do it again then it just becomes tedious and doesn’t make much sense. Overall though I loved just about every boss and mini boss in Sekiro, the combat is amazing. It is pretty punishing at first but the process of getting good was so worth the early game struggle. I long for that feeling of being a noob for the first time again and having to learn and overcome insurmountable odds.
Great video, but I disagree with your idea that "mele only no items / summons" is the "normal" way to play souls. That's a challenge run. Normal is to do whatever you want that the game allows.
I think the problem for us Dark Souls veterans is we think we can fight in the same way in Sekiro. We can’t. You have to learn the combat system from scratch which is something we haven’t had to do for a long time. Skills transfer between Dark Souls games. They don’t transfer to Sekiro. That’s why I struggled with it so much. Once it clicked, it became my favourite FromSoft game.
"...And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what the game wanted me to do against the [Demon of Hatred's] Phase Two overhead strike." 1:42:15 My brother in christ did you not see the Grapple Icon that appeared on his head when he did that? The game practically handed the hint to you to jump and Grapple him on a silver platter and you didn't see it... edit: Nevermind, you DID see it, but that was still mostly your fault for not paying attention to the game in the first place. Also, I apologize for sounding angry, but your video does have flaws that can be basically dumbed down to: Human Error.
Genichiro rematch can be the first boss encounter after Blazen Bull, as you might know by now. So I say you first trying him from where you were at your progress point had high likelihood. As a first try, still an accomplishment. Well done.
I played Sekiro by gunning for Genichiro instead of going to the other areas. Doing it this way, it’s clear Genichiro is a late early - mid game skill check: Fromsoft tells you “hey if you can’t beat this guy, deflect, and know what mikiri counter is you’re going to struggle later on.” I feel like this is reinforced by the game because final boss Genichiro does feel easier due to beating him at Ashina Castle. It does make him a cake walk for repeat playthroughs like you said, but Inner Genichiro fixes this.
I strongly agree that Sekiro has the most difficult learning curve of any souls-like but it is strange to hear someone who beat Elden Ring at level 1 complain about a game being punishing or having it’s difficulty too high. The Blazing Bull boss *is* a bad boss but you’re not supposed to deflect him. If you chase him around and slash his butt: you can beat him without needing to block or deflect. It’s a very strange boss because the game teaches you about many battle mechanics, none of which I found particularly useful for the fight.
Pro tip: -you can using gachiin sugar to backstab few mini-boss so u only fight them with 1 health bar -using shura candy + mortal blade is easy mode to kill guardian ape 1st phase and skip double ape phase on guardian ape second encounter
Honestly the kicking shinobi is one of my favorite fights. It was the main thing that taught me that I’m not owed space to fight. I had to work with what I had and control the field enough to where I didn’t hoe myself or the camera. Perfect mix of defense and offense along with lady butterfly
I saw you made a comment response vid as well, but I will add for Corrupted Monk you don’t have to learn this boss perfectly. Unless you just happened to use footage without it, you def need to use confetti against apparitions (and snap seeds are also insanely effective but they’re less common at this stage in the game and not as necessary as confetti). I love having basically unlimited sugars, which are the reward for the headless. Avoiding those may have set you up not to realize that confetti is basically needed for apparitions (and also raises your damage output on all regular enemies as well when used but raises damage a considerable amount against apparitions), or else it turns into an incredibly tedious task. Especially with corrupted monk. With confetti he goes down pretty quick. Even faster if you have some snap seeds. Which allows you to make many more mistakes and not run him perfectly. I realize this vid is years old but just for anyone coming across this.
There is a specific mechanic for defeating each boss. I know it's pretty cryptic sometimes finding out exactly what that mechanic is, but I think that leads to more experimentation. Like combining oil with the fire prosthetic, or using mortal blade when a boss leaves you a large opening. I think a lot of people play this game-and Elden Ring- in such a rigid way they don't use what the game gives you to make it not easier, but less difficult. If that makes any sense at all.
You are meant to deflect the blazing bull, since it staggers and allows you deal substantial damage. You are meant to play it like a rodeo, by running away and waiting for it to attack. It still doesn’t stop this boss from being absolute dogshit though!
>ignores prosthetic mechanic >complains when fights are hard because no prosthetics >complains when items are useless because hes not using them on prosthetics If only something could solve both of these problems simultaneously
Not only that. >Give players a way to adjust the difficulty If only there was some sort of item that temporarily increased either your damage, your posture, or even your defense . Perhaps some kind of sugar that did such things or maybe even some confetti that functions as a damage buff. Then again, using items is cheating. It's better to play the game as it was meant to be played *proceeds to skip all the apparition mini-bosses*.
@@albrechtvonwallenstein2952 Interestingly the game does have options to adjust difficulty (Demon Bell, Charmless) which Feeble never touches on, probably because it reveals that you're already playing on the easiest difficulty.
One thing I love about this game is that in addition to mini bosses, you have “mini-mini bosses” and you can use those to hone skills. I love how these elite enemies are actually very challenging. It’s more like real life. Elite soldiers are never gonna be like Star Wars stormtroopers, (just totally inept and die easily).
Sekiro is my favorite Fromsoft game, but after the second playthrough, they replayability definitely falls off imo. The combat arts and tools don't add enough variety. To me, it is not the most replayable at all (Bloodborne for me is). Nothing against the game. It is just how the game is. It's an action game, not an RPG, I find RPGs more replayable. I understand that you say it is more replayable because the first playthrough wasn't as great, and I get that. I found that after getting past Genichiro I started to love it. Then in NG+ I went for the Shura ending and didn't miss Father Owl. After that though there is just really nothing new the game adds for me. Sometimes I come back for the combat, atmosphere, and traversal but that's about it. When it comes to the story I don't think it's crazy good but for a game that is all about combat it is. Sekiro's story is like a 6.5/10 for me. Which is pretty good for a game that barely focuses on it albeit more than the other Soulsborne games. I personally don't find story games or games that have too much focus on story, dialogue, characters, and cutscenes to be as replayable as games that are about the actual gameplay and systems. Sekiro for me doesn't have enough of those rpg systems to keep me engaged for multiple playthroughs.
About the kicking shinobi you meet in the room where you start the game. I feel like he was put in a small room deliberately to make you put pressure on him. When you have to fight multiple of that same enemy later in the game you will struggle if you didn't figure him out in that room
So you just went to an mid game boss and thought that was almost every boss or encounter. You are not supposed to fight the monk at low level, and you get clear hints for that. From very powerful enemies to mini bosses that you should’ve encountered before (like the guy on the bridge before the monk, which if you after the game hints you should’ve encountered him at the castle, learning his timing and moves). After u defeat the boss at the castle(forgot his name) the kid(also forgot his name) tells u that “hey u should go to that valley because u need to find something, directing u to the monk fight. Right before u get to the valley u get another mpc (also forgot his name) that tells u that the valley is dangerous, therefore leering u know that u need to prepare yourself, and maybe explore other places. When u get to the monk u are supposed to have an increased HP,pose and attack power because u fought other bosses, or mini bosses. I defeated the monk first try, but I must admit the second encounter with the monk took a lot out of me. U also get many hints of using the prosthetics, like the firework one. That’s why u have to farm for money in the first place, so that u can upgrade or buy these prosthetics. The ogre is your first hint that prosthetics can be used to against enemies weakness. This monk topic in the video is like a game journalist would explain the game, but I’m sure u are not
"Emma is the only woman in Japan" Dude, this entire region is about to face an invasion from the inner ministry. Why would they leave women and children there instead of evacuating them somewhere safe to begin with?
I don’t really get the point of the argument about “there’s no reason to fight enemies “ the reason is, it’s fun, you buy a game to play it and have a good time, it’s not your job, nobody is forcing you to do it. When I play a well designed game like sekiro where the combat is well designed and fun, I don’t really need extra incentive to fight enemies, because I bought the game to play it
48:30 Sengoku era samurai were both very militaristic and serious about religion, whether it was Buddhism or Christianity. And the temples were definitely involved in politics and war, so it really isn't that bizarre. I really wouldn't say that the dungeon path is obvious. The tower is located in plain sight, although it is possible to miss the hook prompt. The back gate to Sunken Valley is very visible as well. If anything, I'd say it's the most obscure path. I assume that the tunnels are far longer, we just skip the boring stuff. The one near the temple actually explains how Emma can get to the castle tower before Wolf. Other than that, excellent critique.
Your opinions on prosthetics, consumables and stealth are... Genuinely bad. Money is important. It allows you to upgrade prosthetics and buy said consumables. This does give plenty of reasons to fight enemies. The consumables in sekiro (besides maybe balloons) are mostly very useful. Especially sugars (and infinite sugars from headless). Prosthetics meanwhile are insanely good as counters to a multitude of mobs and boss attacks - and integrating them into combat can make certain encounters like Demon of Hatred hella enjoyable. Stealth work quite well. And you do usually have more than one approach to most stealth sections. You clearly underutilized ceramic shards, gachin sugars and the variety of stealth takedowns. Also - game literally directs you to the easier paths. You just... Completely ignored Kuro and everything he said. Roofs made out of straw are not grapple-able. The game never let's you grapple onto those roofs - so mist noble enterance is not as bad as you describe. (It is dumb that you can't grapple to the tree tho). Your take on corrupted monk is also bad imo. It's an apparition with the fastest posture regen in the game. You made it more hard just because you view using game mechanics - like snap seeds or consumables as cheese. Then again. You viewed money as useless. So I'm not surprised. Seasons don't change in this game. Only the time of day. And both "teleports" have an incantation on the ground. Explaining the teleport. Besides that - love the vids. Keep it up.
I'm always surprised that it's such a commonly held opinion that using items in souls games is cheese, they're so obviously intended to be used in specific instances.
Yeah, this is the the soulsborne game to use items and abilities. You're not a naked DS protagonist, use items (divine confetti....didnt need to punish on corrupted monk like that) get abilities, use prosthetics and listen to npcs and eavesdrop for strats. It's a hard game to lvl 1 with items and prostetics. NO items, prosthetics, and thinking it's cheese to not play like DS is the real enemy
Soulsborne community in a nutshell. They overuse “cheese” or “trivialize” way too much. Cheesing a boss is using an unintended mechanic to beat the boss in a way it was not meant to be beaten. Like demon of hatred glitch. Using, say, the Flame Vent to kill the Guardian Ape is just fighting smart and using what the game gives you.
In Sekiro, they are very janky and overall useless. Aside from some actual cheeses, even against beasts, you still need to learn deflecting, and once you do, items are superfluous. Maybe speeding up the fight a bit.
I don't really understand your aversion to killing basic enemies. I absolutely adore this game's combat, and I love feeling like a god after mastering it, so I go out of my way to kill every single enemy in my way just because I can, often without taking any damage. It's immensely satisfying. It also gives me a reason to use all the different skills.
True, and there's a good gameplay reason to kill basic enemies as well since it refills your revives if you've lost any to boss fights. That's why there's a random archer guy right outside Lady Butterfly's arena, to help you recover that lost revive while you figure the boss out over multiple attempts.
Me as well though I personally skip some of my least favorite enemies if possible (the dudes with hats that jump around at senpou temple because FUCK THEM, and the zombies that only grab because they're just boring and pointless to fight)
Then u decide u want to play ng+ with no charm (hard mode) and then demon bell (makes it EVEN harder). And every single npc turns into a mini boss, then u just want the npcs removed completely💀
A large part of enemies are so easy that killing them feels like a chore. Then you have assassins or nightjars who aren't a real threat but piss people off with their strange attacks. IMO, the enemies should prepare you for the boss fights. But only about a third of all enemies do that like the seekers, spear adepts and the interior ministry staff. If Sekiro had better enemies, people wouldn't get killed by Genichiro, Owl and Isshin so often.
@HGDVHIYHNFFDGHVDVBUFFVHGDCBH Try using shurikens on them when they're jumping. Also look out for the specific animation when you can do a mid air deathblow on them. I used to hate them, but I actually find them fun to fight now.
The chained ogre exists to teach the player the importance of eavesdropping. This is why he's not meant to be defeated by deflecting, you're meant to eavesdrop and learn about his weakness to fire.
Okay but those aren't mutually exclusive. You could have hinted at a tool but also made it more in line with the progression. Edit: Also I'd add that if that was the intention but then they barely use it throughout the game? Lame. Honestly if they just fixed the grab attack id say the ogre is fine Also, on another note their level design is sometimes too obtuse. Like getting to the Hirata Estate and also find the singular item to make the chained ogre more ideal for a newcomer seems like something that could be improved
@@austin0_bandit05 based response. If the chained ogre is supposed to teach eavesdropping, then why do we never need that mechanic to beat any other boss in the game? Edit: The chained ogre was an easy boss I by no means needed eavesdropping to beat. I dont think this issue matters much in the critique as it is being made out to be in these comments since my criticism of the chained ogre was not that it was hard, but that hit and run tactics trivialized the fight which is odd in a game mostly about posture break.
@@plasmasnake542 "why do we never need that mechanic to beat any other boss in the game?" That is what I said. What other boss is defeated through eavesdropping? I could have missed something and I'm not trying to be mean, it just seems like you're straw-manning my statement almost intentionally. I'm never said that we didn't use eavesdropping in Sekiro, I simply said that no other boss I can remember is defeated through eavesdropping.
"I have played through all endings and went through all the trials and know everything about the game to give this review." Proceeds to complain that the tutorial text boxes have too much info, didn't bother to read them, then doesn't know health affects posture recovery lol. Also, "I took the absolute worst path to play the game because it clearly hints for you to go to the top of the tower after defeating the bull and I ignored it completely and ran off in a random direction. I will now complain that these mid game enemies are too tough for my beginning skill level."
Yeah Skyrim ruined a generation of gamers. "I want to go where I want, whenever I want, with leveled enemy scaling and a difficulty that permits no item usage."
It seems like almost every problem you have with the game comes from you putting artificial limitations on yourself and then criticizing your game for being difficult without the mechanic intended for that moment
Honestly don’t get it. He complains and complains about bosses being difficult and borderline unfair and chalks it up to some terrible game design but then actively ignores a major part of the game design. Like the chained ogre, he’s not there to teach players to run around and then attack, he’s there to teach players to use prosthetics in combat and to eavesdrop. Also almost all of his moves can actually be parried other than his grab. Ignoring the use of fire as weakness if fine, that’s how I beat him my first play through, but to suggest it’s poor design because he ignored the mechanics is on him. Like I get it’s some personal badge of honour to beat every boss with no prosthetics but the game is designed to use them. Most bosses have a particular prosthetic you’re meant to marry with them and it doesn’t make them easy, it makes them fun. He said he’s beat the game 4 times and in those 4 times he never decided to try a play through where he uses the prosthetics and play the game as INTENDED by the developers?
@@jockturner1547 I think it has a lot to do with the souls community and “git gud”. Souls games have really fun and challenging combat systems and it *is* fun to master them, but a lot of people then like to suggest that doing anything other than beating the game using the primary combat system alone is somehow cheesing the game. You see the same thing with people talking about Dark Souls, Demon Souls, Elden Ring, and even Bloodborne a little bit. Its always seemed a little weird to me, like I understand challenging yourself but pretending like huge chunks of the game are only there for if you’re struggling or are some kind of unintended mechanic is ridiculous. If a game gives you a bunch of items and tools it expects you to use them, and most people are going to do that. The only people who don’t are those who took “git gud” too seriously.
@@emmafountain2059 It's not cheesing. It's just not fully rising up to the challenge set by the developers. Which is actually fine, as the items being there in the first place says that they don't expect you to do that, only to rise up to it just enough. Think of it like a puzzle game where solving 75% of it is enough to beat it. But some like to get that 100% and when it doesn't feel reasonable to do so that's when they get annoyed
Honestly it feels like a lot of your complaints come down to personal preference. You think stuff is too hard but then get upset at the tools the game gives you to work around the difficulty, several characters tell you “hey who cares how you win as long as you win.” The whole point of items isn’t to carry you through the game, they’re supposed to be early on crutches (along with stealth and to a lesser extent prosthetics) to give you more opportunities to progress and actually play the game to learn. You mentioned earlier that the samurai generals are good training for Genichiro, but you also said you were off put by the game when you first started. Geni will always be a better teacher of the mechanics and how to beat Genichiro than any other enemy, so it should be better to not slam your head into a brick wall and walk through him later in the game (story reasons and otherwise.
Id fully agree. Saying that using items and other tools aviable to you is "not engaging with the combat system" about as true as saying "leveling up in darksouls is false becasue killing enemies faster (or having more stamina) requires you to not master their mechanics"
@@johnmclawson3982 Id suggest you check out some videos on what is truly possible within the combat system. There are multiple skilltrees granting you certain technuiqes and attacks that cab massively change the flow of combat . I personaly liked the throwing stars because they allowed me to interrupt enemies who used air combos or close the gap via the throw dash combo
I agree with this, he some valid points, but mostly he just didn't... and I hate to say this lol... git gud. Sekiro is only punishing if you're choosing not to learn the mechanics AND you're not improving your own skills while you play. If your focus is getting better, then the gameplay is rewarding AND fun. If your focus is convenience, then you're gonna get salty real fast
So like. I'm at the corrupted monk part of the video and I was really confused as to how you found it so hard. I might regret commenting this before watching the rest of the video to confirm but did you not know bosses slowed their posture regeneration the more damage you did to their health bar after all those hours?
To your question "Why FromSoft fans are still okay with all the boss cheese for unskilled players ?", I think the answer is given by Genichiro when he cheeses you in a cutscene "A shinobi would know the difference between honor and victory".
@@jessem3149WHAT?!? Did we play the same game? You can easily cheese those bosses. Genichro first phase you just stunlock him in the corner and for phase 2 you just mikiri loop him with consumables. For isshin phase 1 just jump mortal draw to end it, for phase 2 you might have to fight it for a few seconds but phase 3 and 4 you just jump mortal draw before he even brings the spear out and does a single attack.
@@NathanSavageDamage Meant this in the sense that those who don't try to really learn the fundamentals won't be able to pull these kinds of things off. By being able to do what you're saying, you have to TRY and be skilled enough to do it, proving my point that unskilled players won't be able to pull that off. This was my intention, versus "cheesing" not being able to be done at all, you just need to be good at the game to actually do it.
@@jessem3149 Well the people you are referring to might not be able to play any video games if they can't do the things listed, you can just watch a video and then do it.
About the dual line shadow fight, you can literally puppeteer the one on the side of the room to flip the odds and turn it into a 2v1. That fight is definitely there to teach you the importance of that ninjutsu. It's not very hidden either, not sure how you missed that. With the corrupted monk, you know damaging the health bar slows posture recovery right? The lady butterfly fight told you that. If you just go for perfect deflects the whole fight, of course your not going to make any progress. Also seems to me as you almost completely disregard skills and prosthetic tools, for whatever reason. These can be so useful and look fucking sick most of the time. A good example would be the lazulite axe in the lady butterfly fight. This acts as an unlimited use snap seed in that regard while also doing incredible damage. The lazulite flame barrel can harm spirits such as the corrupted monk or the shamans. Any poison blade is a free kill for the people in the divine realm as they are INCREDIBLY weak to poison. High flying kick, can dodge sweeps and counter them at the same time, sakura dance can lightning reverse, living force is just a straight dps upgrade and so many more. Experimenting with different options is one of the best parts of this game so it's just hard to believe you kind of ignored it. Also you make a point of ignoring enemies the whole time because theres no point in killing them. But this would have changed if you used skills and prosthetic tools as you would want the upgrades and skills which you need XP and rare resources found from killing them. Overall good review but some of the, "issues" you had with the game are completely unfounded and simply due to lack of common player knowledge. Edit: The flame umbrella allows you to not take any fire damage from demon of hatred while also having a great follow up attack if you got that skill in the tree. Man you really should play through, but actually use the tools and skills, you'll have a better time.
I don't get why he ignores parts of the game and then complains about things that the things he ignores solves He ignores the prosthetic and doesn't need money, but it's not the game's fault. It's like doing a lvl 1 run in any other From game and saying that souls don't matter, and that enemies are not worth fighting. "I can just use the soul items in my inventory rather than kill enemies to buy items". Ignoring the reward for killing enemies and saying that killing enemies feels useless is a bad criticism because it's not what they intended you to do.
@@noamias4897 This is exactly what I was thinking. He ignores a lot of the game mechanics because of personal taste. Fine, but the critique doesn't hold because the issues are solved by these game mechanics. So, pretty much there is no issue, unless you decide ignore a bunch of these mechanics. Interesting video, but a lot of the critique feels like the problem of the game not matching his personal taste. I never played any Fromsoftware games and actually haven't played many games at all, but I felt that this game is guiding me pretty well and I managed to figure a lot of things on my own. I imediatelly went back to the temple, when I got the bell, cause I new about the buda statue and I new that I need to bring it there and wantesd to see what happens. This is were you get fire prostetics needed for the Ogre. But, also some things were more difficult, because I lack the "gamer" insight. Snake stealth encounter was terrifying for me, the path was not so clear, my husband helped a bit, because some things were more obvious for him. And I remember my heart racing after finishing this encounter with minimal health, no heals and no resurrections. Like luckily avoiding a dangerous car crash or a brick that fell from the roof and you stepped away the last second. I do agree with his ctitique in stealth and dragon rot. Jeez, I feel there should be another way to show to player that dragon blood is negativelly affecting people. It feels demoralizing indeed.
Looks like you were not using the mikiri counter or jump counter for the Corrupted Monk’s thrust/sweeping attacks. I can imagine how that would have made the fight substantially harder
Yea plus he went way earlier and said he was just running by enemies and got buying skills lol. The upgraded mikiri counter as well as chasing slice solve all the problems he had with the monk. Most hard enemies have a way to counter them you just have to use the tools the game gives you. I think Fromsoft gave so few tools so that people could experiment and find counters like using Sabimaru on Oren but it had the opposite effect it seems like most people just ignored the prosthesis because they weren't viable stand alone weapons even though that was never their purpose.
@@shby95 I ignored the prosthesis because I had to grind coins and find random items to upgrade it. And when in the fight, the use of a prosthetic seems like negating much of the challenge a boss is supposed to provide. The only prosthetic I ever use is the shurakin, and only to close the distance between myself and the enemy with the slash attack.
I'm also venturing a guess here that you never used any of the prosthetic tools and just deflected and R1 spammed your way through the game? Did you even try using the fireproof umbrella tool in the Demon of Hatred bossfight? It's the perfect tool for surviving his massive fire attacks. Bro, not to be mean, but I don't think you are the right person to be making these critique videos.
You don't have to die to the snake after using the mind control on the monkey. He sorta jumps up and screams, snake gets distracted, you grapple and run past.
I scrolled through so many comments to see if anyone mentioned it, but eventually gave up... The freaking umbrella! So god damn O.P. for so many reasons. It can deflect, it can block, it can attack, it can make the Demon of Hatred so easy. Also the spear for Headless after you deflect the big horizontal attack. HUGE posture damage... Generally going through this game without using, at least, prosthetics, is just making the whole experience worse.. You have so many options and tools that makes each boss encounter so much more fun and engaging, and you just ignored most of them, and then even complained about them being poorly designed. Never have I played a game this fun to master, and robbing yourself of most of it's mechanics is just a downright shame.
18:30 sounds you didn't bother to explore the ninjustsus or even try any of your other options there's plenty of ways to even the playing field bloodsmoke is good for a group of enemies backstab 1 blind them with smoke and take out there others quickly or have puppeteer to get a temporary Ally to fight alongside you.You also have a whistle prosthetic to lure enemies away from the group and backstab them.The game gives you options you just don't use them. As for the lone Shadow guy it's not that hard to take care of the ally with stealth kill him first and he want be a bother.
One problem was that he did the side paths before Genichiro lmao so he didn't have like any of the tools, Bloodsmoke helps so much later one but you get the from Genichiro
Chained ogre was supposed to teach you 1) Some items are very strong on certain enemies, and you can learn what that is from clues in the game . 2) You can grapple some enemies, just like the dude on the horse or the first monke.
This miniboss still confuses players more than it teaches them. At that point you've seen a miniboss who you have to fight the "Sekiro way" and a miniboss where the "Sekiro way" is pretty much useless. As a result the player has no idea what the game wants from him.
"I don't know how to pronounce his name so we're gonna call him Horseman" this is a small moment, but really encapsulates a lot of the problems I and many others seem to have with your approach. You're so focused in on the point you're trying to make you're just ignoring things the game tells you right to your face. Whether its posture relating to health, the Chained Ogre's teaching moments about fire weak red eyes, eavesdropping, etc., or just Gyoubu telling you exactly how to pronounce his name.
Your values just differ from his, I don't care about minute details such as those you listed. My mindset is to focus on the purpose not every individual detail.
@@SixthAllicard minor details such as...the names of major characters? The point was that his problems often stem from just ignoring things the game directly tells him. Also you do you dude?
This man completed Senpou Temple, Ashina Depths and Mibu Village before fighting Genichiro. I love the shit out of this game and this is unheard of to me. I respect it.
I almost did the same thing I basically went around to the back of genichro tower instead of going to the top, the entrance to the top can be easy to miss especially if you wanna run past that area due to the relatively tough enemies
I kinda disagree about the Isshin 4 phases being the artificial difficulty. Because as long as there are many phases, the phases arent as long as for example 2 phases in owl father. As long as youre aggressive against isshin, it should take you as long as owl father with 2 times less phases. However his posture goes pretty fast, so it encourages you to be aggressive against him, cause otherwise its gonna last forever. But I agree about the lightning reversal making the 4th phase easier, Isshin should be a little bit harder on that one
I mean idk. I'm prone to always mess up a lightning reversal. I have no idea why or how lol. But when you don't perfect them every time but you do go for the reversal every time, they feel more balanced. You lose so much health and are momentarily stunned so your cost is high if you mess them up. I'll grant that maybe they should inflict less posture or give less stun time on the boss but I've also seen videos of people who would prefer to just dodge the lightning than go for the reversal. So idk. Maybe it's fine depending on the skill level of the player.
@@kyletrout3828 lightning reversal is easy, it doesn't matter when you get hit or when you deflect it just so long as you haven't touched the ground yet.
I always looked at is a genichiro being the "buy-in" for the right to fight ishinn. Ishinn fight being only the first 2 phases with the 3rd being a spectacle to finish the game and look cool
The thing is, Ishin is really just 2 phase with 2 moveset you need to learn. Genichiro is a boss you've beaten already, and he's much easier this time around since his mortal draw leaves his back open for attack. Isshin last phase is just his second one but with lightning, so it's easier. The only phases you need to learn is Isshin's first and second phase.
He also said that using divine confetti (the stuff specifically made for ghost type enemies) would make you less skillful? Like the entire reason for the cobfetti being in the game is to give you an edge
@@eebydeeby03one legit criticism I can think of is that confetti at that point of the game in NG is a very limited consumable (so is snap seeds) and inventory hoarders (me, I’m so guilty of this) will not want to use it. Yes the high priest’s house give you a couple of confetti but that’s only good for a couple of tries.
@@eebydeeby03 Yeah, corrupted monk is in a similar ballpark as headless or shichimen warriors as in you need divine confetti if you don't want to die inside during the fight
Dude, you can defeat the chained ogre with fire, the blazing bull with firecrackers, and you can look for clues in your environment to make your entire run easier. Using items is a part of the game, why would you not use them?
@@firmak2yeah that's just self handicapping. Don't complain about difficulty if you're intentionally making it more difficult. Use everything you have in order to win. It isn't going to destroy your playthrough in any way I promise.
Almost every single point that's brought up in the video is flat out wrong. This guy contradicts himself over and over again sometime in one breath. It just doesn't sound like he knows what he talking about and isn't looking at the game logically but instead speaking from a place of deep butt hurt.
“BuT lInEaR gAmEs ArE uNrEpLaYaBlE!”. Idiots who failed to recognize how Sekiro and DS3 are some of the games were I constantly see people reaching high NG+! Like seriously, compare that to the likes of DeS or DS1 were people barely go past NG+1 or 2.
Good points overall but I disagree on some of the takes on the difficulty. This game WAS hard but after dying multiple times to Lady Butterfly, a boss you can't steal kill the first bar of health, there and then I realized there are bosses that you have to face head on and high head strong - something in that moment clicked in me that the another way to play this game is to be to be a samurai - AGGRESSIVE!. From there on, I was able to be the SAMURAI and to be the SHINOBI and the game was on easy mode. Fromsoft's game design signature is to make the game look almost impossible at face value (this is why a lot of players quit before they even get to 2nd encounter Genichiro) but the more you pick up the pace and gain more understanding the easier it gets. Part of the reason why you would see a lot of players say "I hope I can experience **Insert any Fromsoft game** for the first time again", as we humans yearn to crawl out from hardships and get to the goal only to miss the perseverance we have indulged by achieving what we want. Having the learning process to be more punishing in Sekiro served a great purpose since there is no way out of there - only to well yeah... git gud. Jokes aside, I can see why they have to enforce this strictly as to the point it becomes punishing as they needed the players to be able assimilate the fighting mechanics as soon as possible. The game becomes much more entertaining and visually crafted by your own gameplay. The more grasp on the fighting mechanics the more animesque the game becomes. You use more prosthetics, you counter more, you squeeze attacks before the stagger animation from the enemy is completed. Look at Ongbal's Sekiro videos; the guy has extensive understanding of the fighting mechanics of the game that he is basically producing top level anime type content already lol. Fromsoft tie in the connections of the player and the character with the parallels we feel both in fictional and reality approach. By the time you reach the endgame, You the player, and Wolf the shinobi has reached a mindset and skillset that is required to get you through there. I feel like most of your opinions are made based on how you approached the game rather than seeing it in a objective perspective. You are the only one holding yourself back by not using what is on your arsenal, you refused or rather obstinate your gameplay by not engaging in one fundamental mechanics of the game. Most of the time the weakness of the enemy are revealed way before you fought them. "I want the satisfaction of overcoming difficult odds". This is basically close to the Bushido code. Spoken like a true samurai! Fair. I do this too but you need to be able to switch in between, you can't just play Samurai style throughout the entire game without the element of Shinobi, and vice-versa. This is an equivalent of shooting yourself on the foot because as you said "Wolf is more like a samurai not a shinobi". It seems to me like you are speaking from your gameplay because on my gameplay Wolf is more a ninja. I stealth killed bosses' first health bar if I can because SHINOBIS DO NOT FIGHT FAIR. Also, Finding COLLECTIBLES was not a problem for me since it is often hinted through the "in game text", there's also the "player messages" scattered throughout the world and as a player I am more of the explorer type to the point that I have developed an instinct in which I can sniff out these hidden collectibles lol. I got all gourd seeds on my first blind playthrough. The issue for me though is the utilization of the items you find throughout the game. I finished the game with the gazillion bozo items I got but I guess it's not just a Sekiro problem because almost every other game, not just from Fromsoft, have this problem. Things to note, Sekiro was my first ever Fromsoft game that I played, so at that time I had no scope of reference of a soulslike to compare it to. I just went and dove deep with the only expectation that I will be playing a shinobi. I was the biggest fan of Arkham Series and when I saw this Sekiro was on sale on Steam and saw the stealth tag, I got it without knowing what "soulslike" is. All in all, Sekiro was my introduction to the one of the best genre in gaming. The soulslike.
definitely agree that they held themselves back. 100 hours on the game and don't know the value of consumables and Shinobi tools?? C'mon now. Also funny they said the beginning of the game is too hard but shit talks stealth. You're a Shinobi fighting large crowds of stronger ppl. Stealth is your equalizer, the game IS hard but not embracing aspects of the game that it clearly tells you about is gonna lead to a worse time
No mikiri counters and ever time he jumps over a red attack he doesn’t jump on there head for extra posture damage , feeling like a lot of this review is just you not having enough info or good use off all the mechanics the game offers
54:18 some bosses require you to get in a few hits, since the lower the vitality (HP) the slower posture will heal, this is also true for the player character (though you can accelerate posture recovery by holding down the block button) since you already were at Ashina Castle at this point, I'm surprised you didn't pick up on this, since the sword wielding miniboss general is there to teach you that some enemies will have extremely good posture recovery, so in addition to deflecting you will need to attack aggressively as well, taking away as little as 30% of a bosses vitality will significantly slow down their posture recovery
@@highlightermarca-texto3281 well, once your mind sets on how you think the intended way is, it's often hard to change your method if he enjoys playing it that way, it's cool, and since he already admitted he was wrong, I think all's fine yeah he missed the fact that the miniboss in front of Ashina Castle with the 4 gunmen is a tutorial on posture recovery when vitality is low, but I think it's safe to say, that he has already read a comment that corrects him
When Sekiro says "One who opposes the Buddha?", I interpreted the way he said it as one of contemplation, like he was slowly repeating what the dying man was saying to try and deduce who "the one who opposes the Buddha" might mean. Especially since it ends up being someone he never mt before and only had an adjacent knowledge of as it was pointing at being the person causing the fog in the valley. I never heard that line as meaning that Sekiro was taken aback by the idea of anyone ever daring to stray from or question or not believe in or be otherwise diametrically at odds with the principles of Buddhism. The way he repeated what the dying man was saying was very contemplative in delivery, the man being near death makes sense as to why Sekiro would vocalize his thoughts about finding the culprit with any other hints the dying Buddhist can give before he dies. But it seems like a contemplative statement where Wolf was solidifying the new lead in his mind by vocalizing it with slow, deliberate articulation and so the dying man can hear that Sekiro is indeed taking interest in pursuing the man's dying wish. H was trying to deduce the identity of the man through careful thought and allow for the mortally wounded man to be able to add any further leads, hints or contemplations of his own as easily as possible in such a state of death throes. The river noble village he was about to visit next was completely devoid of true Buddhists, as the village populous had all but completely abandoned the core tenets of Buddhism, wherein residents had rejected restraint from desire and excess, rejected the pursuit of self-improvement and they had absolutely rejected the idea of reincarnation by pursuing its polar opposite in pursuing the immortality of the rejuvenating waters. So considering Wolf is a Shinobi that is well acquainted with Ashina and its people, especially its biggest and most prolific areas like Mibu village and the Mibu Nobles, its likely that the Mibu may have been first to come to his mind as he rearticulated the hint the dying man gave about who was causing the fog was "One who opposes Buddha", it is very likely that Mibu came to mind first within Ashina. And in less words: Wolf said it out loud and thought deeply about who best fits the description as 'opposers of Buddha', and with the slow and deliberate vocal cadence of Wolf's words, it sounds like he is both in deep contemplation about the culprit, as well as deducing who the culprit indeed is. Wolf comes off as deeply contemplating the potential candidates based on the defining characteristic the dying man gave to wolf, but the slow and deliberate speed to the cadence makes it sound as though Wolf was in fact making that connection between the heretical abuse of the rejuvenating waters by the Mibu and the dying man's guidance that Wolf should seek out "One who opposes Buddha" and deducing that it is a Mibu noble who is in fact at fault for the depravity and illusions plaguing the valley they stand in.
Something i learned that i didnt expect to work is you can actually mikiri counter the purple shinobi's unblockable forward kick. Youre stoppin a kick by stompin down on their shin
You saying ‘I dont wanna look up how to make the minibosses easy because then victory feels hollow’ paired with Tyrannicon cheesing a boss had me dying
sekiro is a game that broke me and I thought I would never be able to beat it. Beating the sword saint for the first time was probably the largest opium rushes I had In my life so far. It might have broken me but I came back stronger and prouder
About the first snake attack, what made you think it was an unfinished sequence? And about Corrupted Monk, I'm pretty sure it was balanced to be a longer battle until you get her HP to half, which then stops any posture recovery. And since it's an illusion, you can use fire, snap seeds, firecrackers... It's not that bad at all. Wait, Genichiro AFTER Corrupted Monk? That explains everything. The second Corrupted Monk was only easier because you met it at the appropriate time. And still, the first fight was only phase 1 of the second fight, so it is mostly a new fight. It won't be easier for most people. About the bosses making you feel like the boss through mastery, DMC5 does that and it feels incredible
This is definitely my favorite Fromsoft game without any doubt, and one of my favorite games of all time. Still hearing that you first time beat Genichiro hurts me because it took me 9 hours across three days.
I keep replaying and replaying the bossfights against Isshin, Genichiro and Owl. Especially Sword Saint Isshin is so damn enjoyable I can play that fight 10 times back to back at the idol. If this game had something like Chalice Dungeons I'd never quit playing. The idea of a Berserk game playing as Guts made by From would be awesome. I don't even dare imagining it
Genichiro did the same for me, he really is the wakeup call. Before that point you could get by with dodging instead of parrying, but not him. You gotta learn the game and that took me wayyyy too long lmao
He beat him way later into the game than most people do. That's probably why. It took me a fuckin while to beat Genichiro but that was pretty much the moment I figured out how the game works and fell in love with it.
You can make your way up Ashina Castle from the inside to reach the Vilehand fight during the invasion and stealth-kill his buddy before either of them notice you. I actually don't know how you entered that fight from the outside roof. I had no idea it was possible. It's funny. I feel like Sekiro came to me more naturally than any other FromSoft game. Despite repeated playthroughs I never managed to git gud at any entry except Sekiro, and I gitted real good.
I feel like the chained ogre actually had a lot of utility in where it was placed. Firstly, as other comments pointed out, teaching you about the usefulness of eavesdropping and clue hunting, and also teaching you that the prosthetic tools are useful in combat. But I also want to add that the ogre teaches you that deflecting may be the main mechanic, but dodging is still just as important. A lesson that I feel comes in handy when going against the Ape and the Demon of hatred. This is something I don't actually hear very often in discussions surrounding the game
Except the orge will one shot you for any msitake and is about 10 hours or longer away from the ape or demon. With 10 or more bosses in between which rely heavily on parrying making it seem like a one off.
@@blinkyy1088 Nope, the placement makes perfect sense when you consider the 3rd boss it teaches you to handle which follows directly after it which is the brazen bull (which is also the boss that teaches you about status buildups a good while before they're relevant again) these monstrous bosses all act as their own subset that require unique approaches and sneaky use of your tools (finger whistle, firecrackers, umberdoodle etc) In between both these fights you also contend the giant serpent and learn pretty quickly that you're meant to get the hell out of there an not fight further showing the player that sometimes a straight up battle is NOT the way to go. (Considering how you eventually handle the snake through stealth and tactics vs brute force and parrying feeds into this.) They not only build up the same way all the standard swordfight bosses do towards isshin but they provide a massive amount of info about how to manipulate Sekiro's tools effectively. I absolutely agree with OP that this chain of bosses and the ramping of them mechanically all the way to DoH is slept on. He has the Ogre's aggression, the Snake's pure size and attacks that are best ran from vs dodged or blocked, and he has the exact status the brazen bull absolutely bullys you with the first time you enter its boss room
Corrupted monk is brilliant dude, one of the best bosses in the game. I like how the fight takes forever, it just gives me more time to enjoy the fight lol. On first playthrough though it can be a little frustrating because divine confetti is limited and you may not know at the time that you’re supposed to whittle down her hp before stacking posture damage. That being said if worse comes to worst you can cheese her and come back later when you’re more prepared.
@@Ghorda9 Ehh I don’t know about that. From my experience the drop rate is pretty low, once you upgrade the senpou arts tree i’m sure it’s more common but you won’t have that at that point in the game. It depends on how many times you’re gonna die. Between corrupted monk and O’rin you could be dying a few dozen times depending on the player skill level. That’s a good amount of farming. But you don’t technically need divine confetti for corrupted monk, but if you don’t use it the fight will take quite a while which may be stressful for brand new players on the first playthrough.
Half right, it's both. The corrupted monk is just taking what the game teaches you when fighting Lady Butterfly (that posture recovery slows down based on their health damage) to it's logical conclusion. It's a single deathblow against an enemy with insane posture recovery, but the recovery becomes very manageable once you take 25%-50% of her total health away, depending on your skill level. Her leaping attacks are all very easy to dodge and get some decent health damage in, and you can use the mortal blade skill for some unblockable health damage as well.
@@ni9274”100x faster to kill it through health bar “ at 1/4 hp you can get a posture kill “ Do you not realize these are two different things? They were talking about lowering the hp to 0, not to 25% for a posture kill
Funny to me that you had so much trouble with Corrupted Monk, then beat Genichiro first try-I usually tell people that Genichiro is the great equalizer-he forces you to learn how to play the game “properly”. Constant aggression, perfect parries, etc. and beating him makes most of the challenges of the rest of the game (final form Isshin excepted) FAR easier in comparison. Not only would Corrupted Monk have been easier by grinding your teeth on Gen, but Corrupted Monk is also, imo, a teaching moment of using items and prosthetics to help kill larger, high health enemies who are hard to have a straight up sword fight with.
@@downsjmmyjones101 kill the monk? The game give’s you the items and equipments to use in a battle, you are not a Samurai, You are a Shinobi, fight to win, hesitation is Defeat. You may like the game by lilting yourself, but if you take everything and use, you gonna love the gam. ;-;
He really is feeble. Sekiro is hard but damn man you make it sound like your first playthrough had bell demon and no kuro charm active. Lol love the videos tho dude keep em coming
@@ni9274 It also seems like he didn't realize that posture regeneration was tied to health, for both him and the enemies, or that his posture would never break as long as he deflected an attack. He also didn't mention the use of prosthetics at all, which combined with the prosthetic skills gives you so many more options to dynamically deal with boss combos, mechanics or level design. Why did he never use prosthetics, I do not know.
@@common_undead He say he didn't used prosthetics and items to better understand the games mechanic, lmao. He didn't even purchased miriki counter, and he did genichiro after fucking fake monk.
@@ni9274 That is such an absurd statement to me. The prosthetics are part of the core mechanics. They aren't like spells or certain weapons in souls games. There's no stat requirements, no fp, no weight limits, nothing. The prosthetics and using them would also address his "complaint" of just running past enemies in the level, since its a good idea to kill them for the chance to drop spirit emblems, and because you can use the money you get to stock up on the emblems for the boss fights. Like he fundamentally doesn't get the mechanics or design choices, but tries to "critique" them still.
It's hard to take this seriously as a critique when many of your issues with the game stem from the fact that you did your first playthrough *completely* out of sequence, and also because you don't (appear) to use core tools like mikiri counters. I mean, you complain about not having a boss early on to test you on deflection...because *you skipped Genichiro* and went to mibu village early. Then you complain about corrupted monk's posture regen...but in the footage, you're not even trying to do HP damage to slow the regen.
![Sekiro Is A Masterpiece [A Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice Retrospective]](/img/n.gif)
It's crazy how someone can make it all the way to Corrupted Monk and completely miss the fact that posture regeneration is tied to HP damage.
I missed that but does it even matter? Like i was to into the fights to even care when they would end imo sekiro fights are the most thrilling when u have someone like the corrupted monk i could tell just from design that it was my favorite boss
@@dasty5228 I mean, if you're gonna critique the game but make completely untrue statements like "the closer the enemies' posture is to breaking the slower it recovers" while not realizing that posture recovery is tied to health, then it gives the impression that the critic didn't understand the game at all. Personally I think if you're gonna do a serious critique of something, you should understand its design mechanics and principles.
@@common_undead this is facts i feel you
I think a lot of his arguments are valid, but this is quite the mistake I have to agree.
@@Churahm I'd argue his entire video is based on the assumption that there is only 1 correct way to play, his way, and if the game didn't conform to his liking then that part of the game was bad. Most of his arguments are assumptions on how the game was designed, but he has no way on know why From Soft designed it in that way. It's just another clickbait video from a From Soft video essay youtuber.
Lone shadow duel boss is only duel boss if you choose enter from the window which is the wrong way. Game punishes you for skipping important places by making it 2v1 if you ran past and grappled everywhere. But it doesn't take the option away from you. The correct way enter is from the behind(from the inside of the castle) and stealth kill the first one. You may choose to use ninjutsu on that guy to make it 2v1 against the boss.
headless ape bro
@@cheeseburgerhotdogman3364you can skip headless ape and his gf if you go to ashina depths before killing the ape
I think this is a level design problem. The window should have been locked so you can't get in from the outside. Because this two-enemy fight in such a small room doesn't make any sense. At least with the apes, I can run 200 meters away to the other end of the cave.
@@MenacingBanjo By this point in the game you have a massive range of tools to make a 2v1 simple even without using the puppet ninjutsu
@@Furionic696 can you give me a couple of examples of the simple strategies for fighting two lone shadows at once in a small room?
I’m confused why he handicapped himself when he played this game, the game tells you to use items pretty blatantly, firecrackers, snap seed, divine confetti, your arm prosthetic are SUPPOSED to be used so you’re not trying to deflect a bull that punishes you for doing so
Because all those things make the game easier and aren’t required? not rocket science
One note: the mechanical purpose of the Lady Butterfly illusion attack is an opportunity to refill a bit on spirit emblems. When I first fought Lady Butterfly I still sucked at the game and wasted a bunch of spirit emblems because I let the fight drag on and let posture recover. It also doesn’t help that you start with a low amount of maximum spirit emblems.
In Sekiro, enemy posture depletes slower when they have less health. The corrupted Monk is much easier if you focus on getting its health low before going for a posture kill. There were multiple instances in your footage where I saw you deflecting instead of taking an opportunity to attack. For example, you can sidestep the jump attack to get a few hits in instead of deflecting. Maybe you figured this out on your own but just didn't use any footage.
wow really? i really struggled with the monk. guess i should go back and play this game again i never mastered it even after getting 100%.
Or just stab the Monk
@@wakkjobbwizard you never saw the big red bar with the boss name ?
@@ni9274 no i just mean i focused much more on posture damage
It's still a very unbalanced, uncreative unfun encounter.
1:24:00 the solution to the multi fight is to enter from the other direction and stealth kill the other enemy, which also gives the opportunity to use puppeteer to turn it into an ally for the fight, you’re supposed to think “wow this fight feels impossible right now” and then use the tools at your disposal to problem solve and make the fight manageable
exactly what i did for the fight with the Seven Spears dude (Shume Masaji Oniwa) near the end of the game, who has a pretty tough enemy right next to him. I put in a good amount of attempts just trying to fight both at the same time, which made it so satisfying and relieving when I figured out I could use puppeteer and make the fight 10x easier
This is a solution, but stealth is a bit jank. Enemies spot you very easily, and resetting them after you fail is slow/annoying. (Esp. after the first playthrough where it's no longer a new encounter.)
@@AshoreNevermore this specific encounter is extremely easy for the stealth kill. you just hug the wall and walk behind him and he wont notice you 19/20 times
During that entire Corrupted Monk rant I was just like "Did he forget that enemies also have a normal health bar, and that Corrupted Monk only has one health bar?"
Owl actually leaves while you fight Emma to kill Genichiro and then places his head next to him in the cutscene.
How did he do that without the mortal blade?
@@MaltexGaming Okay, so the game never states where he gets it aside from Genichiro, my best guess is he took it from him then killed him with it but that part is speculation.
@@twelvevoltage oh yeah, I completely forgot about the black mortal blade! Makes sense
Love the review but your struggles with the corrupted monk were almost entirely created by your lack of information about the game and I don't think she should change at all. First of all, idk if you misspoke but bosses posture regain is based on their health bar not their posture bar. At 50% bosses posture recovery is slowed, and at 25% health bosses will stop recovering posture entirely. (I think this is why chained ogre exists, to make you chip away at health bar and observe it's relation to posture. His posture also wont recover while hes burning, which some npcs tell you to try.)
About her recovering posture too quickly, because you mostly ignored prosthetics you might not know the shuriken is great for keeping up posture damage from a distance. There's also a skill that gives you a follow up slash which comes out way faster and has more range than a dashing light attack. Just by the way you talked about the experience system I would bet you probably undervalue all the skills and tools available to wolf. I'm not even gonna mention snap seeds because realistically most players won't recognize the monk is a spirit, but the point is I think most players severely underestimate the power of certain prosthetics and skills. And more importantly how fucking sick some of them look High monk is the only way I dodge sweep attacks now lmao
and he didnt use mikiri counters
@@distributistsshrekvideo ninja art are for little scrub …
Based.
@@distributistsshrekvideo dude called it a miriki counter
@@ni9274 ninja arts add skill expression and this one is integral
It's no wonder you had so much trouble with the corrupted monk, you played the whole game before fighting the 2nd to 3rd REAL boss, because you apparently forgot you had a grappling hook, I hope you at least realized you could increase your attack power, I know how much the souls community hates reading after all
Souls fans hate it when you actually have to get good instead of increasing arbitrary stat numbers to do slightly more damage
@@GothamiteYT doesnt that argument meqn that everyone should be able to do SL1 playtrough of souls games and if they cant then they suck at the game?
Actually if you kill the headless you get permanent sugars it’s kinda awesome actually
owl father is the fight of sekiro's conflicted feelings. It ties in with the purification ending beautifully.
As someone who’s never played sekiro, I agree.
From what I’m seeing here, your issues with the game all stem from your own personal decision to not use the prosthetics, also leading to a lack of understanding the game mechanics. I’ll break it down here. I’m aware my comment won’t be seen by many, but if you do read it I’d love a response and a legitimate discussion.
1. Prosthetics are meant to be used, and they largely do not trivialize the boss fights at all. If you google what specific timings, combos, or “cheese” strats you can use with the prosthetics, then yes, they make the game too easy. But if you just experiment with them and use common sense? They add a bit of extra combat variety to the game and make boss fights marginally easier without trivializing them. For example, flame vent against the ape or the giant. Great way to build fire damage. Firecrackers are a great way to stop your enemy and get a few hits in, and are fairly effective against every boss in the game. Use the axe for some extra damage. Loaded spear does a ton of posture damage to the guardian ape and gives a sick animation. You can decide to play without these tools, but using a self-imposed handicap to say the game is “too hard” is wrong. And then saying it’s too easy with these prosthetic tools is just outright inaccurate, as again, it’s only too easy if you choose to employ cheese strats.
The game itself encourages you on multiple occasions to do whatever it takes to win, as Shinobi are known for underhanded tactics. You’re allowed to stealth, use hit-and-run, or prosthetics to help yourself out. The beauty of this game is that it’s hard and unforgiving, so you can throw every tool in your arsenal at bosses and mini-bosses to try to get through it without making the game too easy.
2. Fights are not useless at all. They give you money, for… prosthetics. You chose not to use said prosthetics, and that’s on you, but that doesn’t make it a bad design choice. That just means you played the game a different way than the devs intended. Plus, these fights allow you to get skills, many of which are extremely useful and definitely worth grinding for. You get certain combat arts, extra spirit emblem usages, stronger healing gourds, a better mortal draw, and more. Fights also give spirit emblems, which is helpful if you’re running low and helps keep your count high, as they are consumables. Lastly, they give a good amount of practice. And fighting in this game is so fun that I don’t see why you wouldn’t fight enemies. In fact, listing out all of this has made me realize that Sekiro really gives MORE reason to fight enemies than most other games. Sure, the leveling system is gone, but the fact that skills, prosthetics, spirit emblems and multiple consumables are directly tied to fighting gives you plenty of reason to fight, whereas on repeat playthroughs of Bloodborne I find myself sprinting past every fight.
3. The multi-fight complaint is, once again, a self-imposed issue. The multi-fights are obviously made for you to use Shinobi tactics to beat them. In the example of the Lone Shadowmen double fight, you can easily sneak into the room and stealth deathblow the other guy to make it a 1v1. Or even better, you can equip the puppeteer Ninjitsu (which you have to have at this point in the game) to make the second guy fight on your side against the mini-boss. This is applicable to many fights in the game.
Isshin’s third phase is easier than the second because you can just use the lightnings to chop off half of his health, then the posture goes down like nothing.
This guy really didn’t understand the game’s mechanics at all…. Also why would it be hard to pronounce Gyobu Masataka Oniwa….? 🤨 He literally screams it at you.
I think the bull is meant to be chased or run around it in circles - teaching you the important mechanic that wolf is basically as fast as any enemy and never gets tired. I used this tactic on the apes and demon of hatred. The bull in fountainhead palace was taken down super easily this way along with some firecrackers.
I didn't even use firecrackers. Just drop the lock on and constantly dodge attack towards his rear and he never hits you. He was the easiest boss for me actually. Generally for fromsoft games, if you're stuck, try not locking on.
@@resm-oe9ji even if you maintain lock the bull is best fought by chasing it down rather than allowing it to chase you down, hit the ass in the ass is the winning tactic for sure!
I feel like everything you say you dont like are reasons i think the game is great.
You cant level your way through problems, and you cant change a build to abuse boss mechanics.
The combat is tailor made around one way of fighting. One highly refined singular system, and expects you to learn it. And the more you do what the game wants, the more you learn, and the better it feels.
Yes, at the start when you dont understand Sekiro and you try to force the game to play like a souls game, it feels terrible. Downright unfair, but thats the point. Not to be unfair, but to force you to learn. This isnt a souls game, and you need to learn how to play me from scratch.
And then you have that moment where it all just clicks with you. You get it. And learning the bosses becomes the most rewarding experience in any game. Not just beating them. You learn to love learning like no other game.
One detailed I saw in cutscenes is that wolf is rusty at the start of the game and fumbles pulling his sword out of the sheath but at the end of the game he does it perfectly and is completely focused on the fight that he doesn’t notice that Kuro faints behind causing some leaves to fly across the bottom right corner of the screen
Bro, the ninja multi-fight boss battle is meant to be played by doing the ninjutsu technique to make a puppet of the first ninja by using stealth at first. Then it becomes a 2v1 in your favor.
1:46:18 the Genichiro mixup gave me problems too, and after dying to that mixup for the 15th time I realized you could see the glint on his blade to judge whether it was a sweep or a thrust. If the glint is under him, it’s a thrust, if it’s behind him, it’s a sweep.
46:07 funny story, my friend also did ashina depths first, and after running out of divine confetti for the corrupted monk, quit the game forever. I’ve been trying to get him back into it forever but he won’t budge.
Also I love your style or critique, keep up the good work!
Commenting for the algorithm my man. I appreciate the amount of time and effort you would have put into this.
It's interesting, listening to everyone take on the game. What I thought was unfair or impossible turned out just to be my misunderstanding of the mechanics. By the end of the game I could enter flow states like vegeta going super Sayian and will it was crazy.
I get the frustration of having to clear out a dozen enemies before fighting the mini boss and I do think that’s a little excessive, but I was able to find ways to clear out all the enemies without taking much damage before the boss, so it can definitely be done but if you die to the boss and have to do it again then it just becomes tedious and doesn’t make much sense. Overall though I loved just about every boss and mini boss in Sekiro, the combat is amazing. It is pretty punishing at first but the process of getting good was so worth the early game struggle. I long for that feeling of being a noob for the first time again and having to learn and overcome insurmountable odds.
Great video, but I disagree with your idea that "mele only no items / summons" is the "normal" way to play souls. That's a challenge run. Normal is to do whatever you want that the game allows.
1:46:20 if u have hard time seeing his model u can see the glow on his sword
I think the problem for us Dark Souls veterans is we think we can fight in the same way in Sekiro. We can’t. You have to learn the combat system from scratch which is something we haven’t had to do for a long time. Skills transfer between Dark Souls games. They don’t transfer to Sekiro. That’s why I struggled with it so much. Once it clicked, it became my favourite FromSoft game.
"...And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what the game wanted me to do against the [Demon of Hatred's] Phase Two overhead strike."
1:42:15
My brother in christ did you not see the Grapple Icon that appeared on his head when he did that? The game practically handed the hint to you to jump and Grapple him on a silver platter and you didn't see it...
edit: Nevermind, you DID see it, but that was still mostly your fault for not paying attention to the game in the first place. Also, I apologize for sounding angry, but your video does have flaws that can be basically dumbed down to: Human Error.
My man probabl never even had the idea of trying the umbrella prostethic. Fire resistent one makes the fight a lot more managable
Genichiro rematch can be the first boss encounter after Blazen Bull, as you might know by now. So I say you first trying him from where you were at your progress point had high likelihood. As a first try, still an accomplishment. Well done.
I played Sekiro by gunning for Genichiro instead of going to the other areas.
Doing it this way, it’s clear Genichiro is a late early - mid game skill check: Fromsoft tells you “hey if you can’t beat this guy, deflect, and know what mikiri counter is you’re going to struggle later on.” I feel like this is reinforced by the game because final boss Genichiro does feel easier due to beating him at Ashina Castle.
It does make him a cake walk for repeat playthroughs like you said, but Inner Genichiro fixes this.
"It would be weird if she was taller than all the men" So we just ignoring Priscilla Maria Freide and Malenia?
The difference is Emma is an NPC in the hub you talk to often who becomes a boss, and it might've seemed odd to make her super tall
The dilapidated temple can barely even be considered a hub. Hell, i wouldn’t consider sekiro even having a hub.
the serpent was scary as f.... I escaped without even stabbing from the tent because I was so scared....
Darksouls this darksouls that, blah blah blah, just git gud seriously, also did he say NO GRAPPLE HOOKS???
Unpopular opinion : Do not play Sekiro right after a Dark souls game, also Sekiro uses your DS fight memory against you.
I strongly agree that Sekiro has the most difficult learning curve of any souls-like but it is strange to hear someone who beat Elden Ring at level 1 complain about a game being punishing or having it’s difficulty too high.
The Blazing Bull boss *is* a bad boss but you’re not supposed to deflect him. If you chase him around and slash his butt: you can beat him without needing to block or deflect. It’s a very strange boss because the game teaches you about many battle mechanics, none of which I found particularly useful for the fight.
Pro tip: -you can using gachiin sugar to backstab few mini-boss so u only fight them with 1 health bar
-using shura candy + mortal blade is easy mode to kill guardian ape 1st phase and skip double ape phase on guardian ape second encounter
Honestly the kicking shinobi is one of my favorite fights. It was the main thing that taught me that I’m not owed space to fight. I had to work with what I had and control the field enough to where I didn’t hoe myself or the camera. Perfect mix of defense and offense along with lady butterfly
I saw you made a comment response vid as well, but I will add for Corrupted Monk you don’t have to learn this boss perfectly. Unless you just happened to use footage without it, you def need to use confetti against apparitions (and snap seeds are also insanely effective but they’re less common at this stage in the game and not as necessary as confetti). I love having basically unlimited sugars, which are the reward for the headless. Avoiding those may have set you up not to realize that confetti is basically needed for apparitions (and also raises your damage output on all regular enemies as well when used but raises damage a considerable amount against apparitions), or else it turns into an incredibly tedious task. Especially with corrupted monk. With confetti he goes down pretty quick. Even faster if you have some snap seeds. Which allows you to make many more mistakes and not run him perfectly. I realize this vid is years old but just for anyone coming across this.
All that is cheese and diminishes victory for real men
@@mynamejef7963 lol. Sure.
There is a specific mechanic for defeating each boss. I know it's pretty cryptic sometimes finding out exactly what that mechanic is, but I think that leads to more experimentation. Like combining oil with the fire prosthetic, or using mortal blade when a boss leaves you a large opening. I think a lot of people play this game-and Elden Ring- in such a rigid way they don't use what the game gives you to make it not easier, but less difficult. If that makes any sense at all.
You are meant to deflect the blazing bull, since it staggers and allows you deal substantial damage. You are meant to play it like a rodeo, by running away and waiting for it to attack. It still doesn’t stop this boss from being absolute dogshit though!
>ignores prosthetic mechanic
>complains when fights are hard because no prosthetics
>complains when items are useless because hes not using them on prosthetics
If only something could solve both of these problems simultaneously
A bullet to the head in his case
Not only that.
>Give players a way to adjust the difficulty
If only there was some sort of item that temporarily increased either your damage, your posture, or even your defense . Perhaps some kind of sugar that did such things or maybe even some confetti that functions as a damage buff. Then again, using items is cheating. It's better to play the game as it was meant to be played *proceeds to skip all the apparition mini-bosses*.
@@albrechtvonwallenstein2952 Interestingly the game does have options to adjust difficulty (Demon Bell, Charmless) which Feeble never touches on, probably because it reveals that you're already playing on the easiest difficulty.
One thing I love about this game is that in addition to mini bosses, you have “mini-mini bosses” and you can use those to hone skills. I love how these elite enemies are actually very challenging. It’s more like real life. Elite soldiers are never gonna be like Star Wars stormtroopers, (just totally inept and die easily).
Sekiro is my favorite Fromsoft game, but after the second playthrough, they replayability definitely falls off imo. The combat arts and tools don't add enough variety. To me, it is not the most replayable at all (Bloodborne for me is). Nothing against the game. It is just how the game is. It's an action game, not an RPG, I find RPGs more replayable.
I understand that you say it is more replayable because the first playthrough wasn't as great, and I get that. I found that after getting past Genichiro I started to love it. Then in NG+ I went for the Shura ending and didn't miss Father Owl. After that though there is just really nothing new the game adds for me. Sometimes I come back for the combat, atmosphere, and traversal but that's about it.
When it comes to the story I don't think it's crazy good but for a game that is all about combat it is. Sekiro's story is like a 6.5/10 for me. Which is pretty good for a game that barely focuses on it albeit more than the other Soulsborne games. I personally don't find story games or games that have too much focus on story, dialogue, characters, and cutscenes to be as replayable as games that are about the actual gameplay and systems. Sekiro for me doesn't have enough of those rpg systems to keep me engaged for multiple playthroughs.
I loved the last Isshin fight as this was where I fully gained perfection. 1 tapped him
About the kicking shinobi you meet in the room where you start the game. I feel like he was put in a small room deliberately to make you put pressure on him. When you have to fight multiple of that same enemy later in the game you will struggle if you didn't figure him out in that room
So you just went to an mid game boss and thought that was almost every boss or encounter. You are not supposed to fight the monk at low level, and you get clear hints for that. From very powerful enemies to mini bosses that you should’ve encountered before (like the guy on the bridge before the monk, which if you after the game hints you should’ve encountered him at the castle, learning his timing and moves). After u defeat the boss at the castle(forgot his name) the kid(also forgot his name) tells u that “hey u should go to that valley because u need to find something, directing u to the monk fight. Right before u get to the valley u get another mpc (also forgot his name) that tells u that the valley is dangerous, therefore leering u know that u need to prepare yourself, and maybe explore other places. When u get to the monk u are supposed to have an increased HP,pose and attack power because u fought other bosses, or mini bosses. I defeated the monk first try, but I must admit the second encounter with the monk took a lot out of me. U also get many hints of using the prosthetics, like the firework one. That’s why u have to farm for money in the first place, so that u can upgrade or buy these prosthetics. The ogre is your first hint that prosthetics can be used to against enemies weakness. This monk topic in the video is like a game journalist would explain the game, but I’m sure u are not
"Emma is the only woman in Japan"
Dude, this entire region is about to face an invasion from the inner ministry. Why would they leave women and children there instead of evacuating them somewhere safe to begin with?
You can get to the other side of that bridge from Sunken Valley
I don’t really get the point of the argument about “there’s no reason to fight enemies “ the reason is, it’s fun, you buy a game to play it and have a good time, it’s not your job, nobody is forcing you to do it. When I play a well designed game like sekiro where the combat is well designed and fun, I don’t really need extra incentive to fight enemies, because I bought the game to play it
48:30 Sengoku era samurai were both very militaristic and serious about religion, whether it was Buddhism or Christianity. And the temples were definitely involved in politics and war, so it really isn't that bizarre.
I really wouldn't say that the dungeon path is obvious. The tower is located in plain sight, although it is possible to miss the hook prompt. The back gate to Sunken Valley is very visible as well. If anything, I'd say it's the most obscure path.
I assume that the tunnels are far longer, we just skip the boring stuff. The one near the temple actually explains how Emma can get to the castle tower before Wolf.
Other than that, excellent critique.
More replayability than something like last raven? With 6 endings and thousands of possible ac combinations?
Bro I didn’t even know that was a split path I just mindlessly went up the castle 💀
there's a way to deflect the bull without taking fire damage
awful video lol
Your opinions on prosthetics, consumables and stealth are... Genuinely bad. Money is important. It allows you to upgrade prosthetics and buy said consumables. This does give plenty of reasons to fight enemies. The consumables in sekiro (besides maybe balloons) are mostly very useful. Especially sugars (and infinite sugars from headless). Prosthetics meanwhile are insanely good as counters to a multitude of mobs and boss attacks - and integrating them into combat can make certain encounters like Demon of Hatred hella enjoyable. Stealth work quite well. And you do usually have more than one approach to most stealth sections. You clearly underutilized ceramic shards, gachin sugars and the variety of stealth takedowns.
Also - game literally directs you to the easier paths. You just... Completely ignored Kuro and everything he said.
Roofs made out of straw are not grapple-able. The game never let's you grapple onto those roofs - so mist noble enterance is not as bad as you describe. (It is dumb that you can't grapple to the tree tho).
Your take on corrupted monk is also bad imo. It's an apparition with the fastest posture regen in the game. You made it more hard just because you view using game mechanics - like snap seeds or consumables as cheese.
Then again. You viewed money as useless. So I'm not surprised.
Seasons don't change in this game. Only the time of day. And both "teleports" have an incantation on the ground. Explaining the teleport.
Besides that - love the vids. Keep it up.
When he said the bit about just running past enemies and how money was useless I was like “no wonder this guy struggled so much with this game” lol
balloons are useful tho thats how you farm money for the prosthetic upgrades
I'm always surprised that it's such a commonly held opinion that using items in souls games is cheese, they're so obviously intended to be used in specific instances.
They’re anything but cheese
Yeah, this is the the soulsborne game to use items and abilities. You're not a naked DS protagonist, use items (divine confetti....didnt need to punish on corrupted monk like that) get abilities, use prosthetics and listen to npcs and eavesdrop for strats.
It's a hard game to lvl 1 with items and prostetics. NO items, prosthetics, and thinking it's cheese to not play like DS is the real enemy
I rarely use items because I always think I'm saving them for something else and by the end of the game I have loads of items I never even used
Soulsborne community in a nutshell. They overuse “cheese” or “trivialize” way too much. Cheesing a boss is using an unintended mechanic to beat the boss in a way it was not meant to be beaten. Like demon of hatred glitch. Using, say, the Flame Vent to kill the Guardian Ape is just fighting smart and using what the game gives you.
In Sekiro, they are very janky and overall useless. Aside from some actual cheeses, even against beasts, you still need to learn deflecting, and once you do, items are superfluous. Maybe speeding up the fight a bit.
I don't really understand your aversion to killing basic enemies. I absolutely adore this game's combat, and I love feeling like a god after mastering it, so I go out of my way to kill every single enemy in my way just because I can, often without taking any damage. It's immensely satisfying. It also gives me a reason to use all the different skills.
True, and there's a good gameplay reason to kill basic enemies as well since it refills your revives if you've lost any to boss fights.
That's why there's a random archer guy right outside Lady Butterfly's arena, to help you recover that lost revive while you figure the boss out over multiple attempts.
Me as well though I personally skip some of my least favorite enemies if possible (the dudes with hats that jump around at senpou temple because FUCK THEM, and the zombies that only grab because they're just boring and pointless to fight)
Then u decide u want to play ng+ with no charm (hard mode) and then demon bell (makes it EVEN harder). And every single npc turns into a mini boss, then u just want the npcs removed completely💀
A large part of enemies are so easy that killing them feels like a chore. Then you have assassins or nightjars who aren't a real threat but piss people off with their strange attacks. IMO, the enemies should prepare you for the boss fights. But only about a third of all enemies do that like the seekers, spear adepts and the interior ministry staff. If Sekiro had better enemies, people wouldn't get killed by Genichiro, Owl and Isshin so often.
@HGDVHIYHNFFDGHVDVBUFFVHGDCBH Try using shurikens on them when they're jumping. Also look out for the specific animation when you can do a mid air deathblow on them. I used to hate them, but I actually find them fun to fight now.
The chained ogre exists to teach the player the importance of eavesdropping. This is why he's not meant to be defeated by deflecting, you're meant to eavesdrop and learn about his weakness to fire.
Okay but those aren't mutually exclusive. You could have hinted at a tool but also made it more in line with the progression.
Edit: Also I'd add that if that was the intention but then they barely use it throughout the game? Lame. Honestly if they just fixed the grab attack id say the ogre is fine
Also, on another note their level design is sometimes too obtuse. Like getting to the Hirata Estate and also find the singular item to make the chained ogre more ideal for a newcomer seems like something that could be improved
@@austin0_bandit05 based response. If the chained ogre is supposed to teach eavesdropping, then why do we never need that mechanic to beat any other boss in the game?
Edit: The chained ogre was an easy boss I by no means needed eavesdropping to beat. I dont think this issue matters much in the critique as it is being made out to be in these comments since my criticism of the chained ogre was not that it was hard, but that hit and run tactics trivialized the fight which is odd in a game mostly about posture break.
@@austin0_bandit05 barely used it thru the game? are we even playing the same game?
is this what happens when you use 15% of your brain?
@@plasmasnake542 "why do we never need that mechanic to beat any other boss in the game?"
That is what I said. What other boss is defeated through eavesdropping? I could have missed something and I'm not trying to be mean, it just seems like you're straw-manning my statement almost intentionally. I'm never said that we didn't use eavesdropping in Sekiro, I simply said that no other boss I can remember is defeated through eavesdropping.
@@plasmasnake542 I think I hurt his feelings.
"I have played through all endings and went through all the trials and know everything about the game to give this review." Proceeds to complain that the tutorial text boxes have too much info, didn't bother to read them, then doesn't know health affects posture recovery lol. Also, "I took the absolute worst path to play the game because it clearly hints for you to go to the top of the tower after defeating the bull and I ignored it completely and ran off in a random direction. I will now complain that these mid game enemies are too tough for my beginning skill level."
Yeah Skyrim ruined a generation of gamers.
"I want to go where I want, whenever I want, with leveled enemy scaling and a difficulty that permits no item usage."
It seems like almost every problem you have with the game comes from you putting artificial limitations on yourself and then criticizing your game for being difficult without the mechanic intended for that moment
Honestly don’t get it. He complains and complains about bosses being difficult and borderline unfair and chalks it up to some terrible game design but then actively ignores a major part of the game design. Like the chained ogre, he’s not there to teach players to run around and then attack, he’s there to teach players to use prosthetics in combat and to eavesdrop. Also almost all of his moves can actually be parried other than his grab. Ignoring the use of fire as weakness if fine, that’s how I beat him my first play through, but to suggest it’s poor design because he ignored the mechanics is on him.
Like I get it’s some personal badge of honour to beat every boss with no prosthetics but the game is designed to use them. Most bosses have a particular prosthetic you’re meant to marry with them and it doesn’t make them easy, it makes them fun.
He said he’s beat the game 4 times and in those 4 times he never decided to try a play through where he uses the prosthetics and play the game as INTENDED by the developers?
@@jockturner1547 Same thing with corrupted monk. I don't think I saw him hit a single Mikiri on her...
@@kyledubois6511 he hit a couple in the video. He actually acknowledges his mistakes and lack of info on the monk in some comments.
@@jockturner1547 I think it has a lot to do with the souls community and “git gud”. Souls games have really fun and challenging combat systems and it *is* fun to master them, but a lot of people then like to suggest that doing anything other than beating the game using the primary combat system alone is somehow cheesing the game.
You see the same thing with people talking about Dark Souls, Demon Souls, Elden Ring, and even Bloodborne a little bit. Its always seemed a little weird to me, like I understand challenging yourself but pretending like huge chunks of the game are only there for if you’re struggling or are some kind of unintended mechanic is ridiculous. If a game gives you a bunch of items and tools it expects you to use them, and most people are going to do that. The only people who don’t are those who took “git gud” too seriously.
@@emmafountain2059 It's not cheesing. It's just not fully rising up to the challenge set by the developers. Which is actually fine, as the items being there in the first place says that they don't expect you to do that, only to rise up to it just enough. Think of it like a puzzle game where solving 75% of it is enough to beat it. But some like to get that 100% and when it doesn't feel reasonable to do so that's when they get annoyed
Honestly it feels like a lot of your complaints come down to personal preference. You think stuff is too hard but then get upset at the tools the game gives you to work around the difficulty, several characters tell you “hey who cares how you win as long as you win.” The whole point of items isn’t to carry you through the game, they’re supposed to be early on crutches (along with stealth and to a lesser extent prosthetics) to give you more opportunities to progress and actually play the game to learn. You mentioned earlier that the samurai generals are good training for Genichiro, but you also said you were off put by the game when you first started. Geni will always be a better teacher of the mechanics and how to beat Genichiro than any other enemy, so it should be better to not slam your head into a brick wall and walk through him later in the game (story reasons and otherwise.
Id fully agree. Saying that using items and other tools aviable to you is "not engaging with the combat system" about as true as saying "leveling up in darksouls is false becasue killing enemies faster (or having more stamina) requires you to not master their mechanics"
@@johnmclawson3982 Id suggest you check out some videos on what is truly possible within the combat system. There are multiple skilltrees granting you certain technuiqes and attacks that cab massively change the flow of combat . I personaly liked the throwing stars because they allowed me to interrupt enemies who used air combos or close the gap via the throw dash combo
Yea, a lot of his criticism was just his personal issue and him not wanting to use certain mechanics in the game.
I agree with this, he some valid points, but mostly he just didn't... and I hate to say this lol... git gud. Sekiro is only punishing if you're choosing not to learn the mechanics AND you're not improving your own skills while you play. If your focus is getting better, then the gameplay is rewarding AND fun. If your focus is convenience, then you're gonna get salty real fast
Even the game says in the first genichiro fight that it doesn’t matter how you win as long as you win
So like. I'm at the corrupted monk part of the video and I was really confused as to how you found it so hard. I might regret commenting this before watching the rest of the video to confirm but did you not know bosses slowed their posture regeneration the more damage you did to their health bar after all those hours?
To your question "Why FromSoft fans are still okay with all the boss cheese for unskilled players ?", I think the answer is given by Genichiro when he cheeses you in a cutscene "A shinobi would know the difference between honor and victory".
A Samurai pretending to a Shinobi?
Those players won't beat the game because you are not cheesing Genichiro and Isshin. Doing themselves a disservice hurts them in the way that matters
@@jessem3149WHAT?!? Did we play the same game? You can easily cheese those bosses. Genichro first phase you just stunlock him in the corner and for phase 2 you just mikiri loop him with consumables. For isshin phase 1 just jump mortal draw to end it, for phase 2 you might have to fight it for a few seconds but phase 3 and 4 you just jump mortal draw before he even brings the spear out and does a single attack.
@@NathanSavageDamage Meant this in the sense that those who don't try to really learn the fundamentals won't be able to pull these kinds of things off. By being able to do what you're saying, you have to TRY and be skilled enough to do it, proving my point that unskilled players won't be able to pull that off. This was my intention, versus "cheesing" not being able to be done at all, you just need to be good at the game to actually do it.
@@jessem3149 Well the people you are referring to might not be able to play any video games if they can't do the things listed, you can just watch a video and then do it.
About the dual line shadow fight, you can literally puppeteer the one on the side of the room to flip the odds and turn it into a 2v1. That fight is definitely there to teach you the importance of that ninjutsu. It's not very hidden either, not sure how you missed that.
With the corrupted monk, you know damaging the health bar slows posture recovery right? The lady butterfly fight told you that. If you just go for perfect deflects the whole fight, of course your not going to make any progress.
Also seems to me as you almost completely disregard skills and prosthetic tools, for whatever reason. These can be so useful and look fucking sick most of the time. A good example would be the lazulite axe in the lady butterfly fight. This acts as an unlimited use snap seed in that regard while also doing incredible damage. The lazulite flame barrel can harm spirits such as the corrupted monk or the shamans. Any poison blade is a free kill for the people in the divine realm as they are INCREDIBLY weak to poison. High flying kick, can dodge sweeps and counter them at the same time, sakura dance can lightning reverse, living force is just a straight dps upgrade and so many more. Experimenting with different options is one of the best parts of this game so it's just hard to believe you kind of ignored it.
Also you make a point of ignoring enemies the whole time because theres no point in killing them. But this would have changed if you used skills and prosthetic tools as you would want the upgrades and skills which you need XP and rare resources found from killing them.
Overall good review but some of the, "issues" you had with the game are completely unfounded and simply due to lack of common player knowledge.
Edit: The flame umbrella allows you to not take any fire damage from demon of hatred while also having a great follow up attack if you got that skill in the tree. Man you really should play through, but actually use the tools and skills, you'll have a better time.
Yeah I used to play this game the exact same every time. Then I figured out how much cool anime shit you can do. Best game ever
I don't get why he ignores parts of the game and then complains about things that the things he ignores solves
He ignores the prosthetic and doesn't need money, but it's not the game's fault. It's like doing a lvl 1 run in any other From game and saying that souls don't matter, and that enemies are not worth fighting. "I can just use the soul items in my inventory rather than kill enemies to buy items". Ignoring the reward for killing enemies and saying that killing enemies feels useless is a bad criticism because it's not what they intended you to do.
@@noamias4897 kind of crazy considering his hour count...
Pretty sure most people would have figured this stuff out right away
@@noamias4897 This is exactly what I was thinking. He ignores a lot of the game mechanics because of personal taste. Fine, but the critique doesn't hold because the issues are solved by these game mechanics. So, pretty much there is no issue, unless you decide ignore a bunch of these mechanics.
Interesting video, but a lot of the critique feels like the problem of the game not matching his personal taste.
I never played any Fromsoftware games and actually haven't played many games at all, but I felt that this game is guiding me pretty well and I managed to figure a lot of things on my own. I imediatelly went back to the temple, when I got the bell, cause I new about the buda statue and I new that I need to bring it there and wantesd to see what happens. This is were you get fire prostetics needed for the Ogre. But, also some things were more difficult, because I lack the "gamer" insight. Snake stealth encounter was terrifying for me, the path was not so clear, my husband helped a bit, because some things were more obvious for him. And I remember my heart racing after finishing this encounter with minimal health, no heals and no resurrections. Like luckily avoiding a dangerous car crash or a brick that fell from the roof and you stepped away the last second.
I do agree with his ctitique in stealth and dragon rot. Jeez, I feel there should be another way to show to player that dragon blood is negativelly affecting people. It feels demoralizing indeed.
@@juditabarkauskaite Agreed on every point. Fun to see that you enjoyed Sekiro, it was my first Fromsoft game and now I've played and love them all
Looks like you were not using the mikiri counter or jump counter for the Corrupted Monk’s thrust/sweeping attacks. I can imagine how that would have made the fight substantially harder
Yea plus he went way earlier and said he was just running by enemies and got buying skills lol. The upgraded mikiri counter as well as chasing slice solve all the problems he had with the monk. Most hard enemies have a way to counter them you just have to use the tools the game gives you. I think Fromsoft gave so few tools so that people could experiment and find counters like using Sabimaru on Oren but it had the opposite effect it seems like most people just ignored the prosthesis because they weren't viable stand alone weapons even though that was never their purpose.
@@shby95 I ignored the prosthesis because I had to grind coins and find random items to upgrade it. And when in the fight, the use of a prosthetic seems like negating much of the challenge a boss is supposed to provide.
The only prosthetic I ever use is the shurakin, and only to close the distance between myself and the enemy with the slash attack.
I'm also venturing a guess here that you never used any of the prosthetic tools and just deflected and R1 spammed your way through the game? Did you even try using the fireproof umbrella tool in the Demon of Hatred bossfight? It's the perfect tool for surviving his massive fire attacks. Bro, not to be mean, but I don't think you are the right person to be making these critique videos.
"uSiNg gAmE mEcHaNiCs iS cHeAtInG"
@@twoshu8940i liked VG Matthew’s Sekiro critique he also has bloodborne and Elden ring ones but i havnt watch either yet
You are right but I didn’t use fire umbrella either to be fair
Epic name bro for ds1, mathewmatosis for ds2, aesir asthetics for sekiro.
Others who have some good videos are smoughtown and hawkshaw.
You don't have to die to the snake after using the mind control on the monkey. He sorta jumps up and screams, snake gets distracted, you grapple and run past.
I scrolled through so many comments to see if anyone mentioned it, but eventually gave up...
The freaking umbrella! So god damn O.P. for so many reasons. It can deflect, it can block, it can attack, it can make the Demon of Hatred so easy. Also the spear for Headless after you deflect the big horizontal attack. HUGE posture damage...
Generally going through this game without using, at least, prosthetics, is just making the whole experience worse.. You have so many options and tools that makes each boss encounter so much more fun and engaging, and you just ignored most of them, and then even complained about them being poorly designed. Never have I played a game this fun to master, and robbing yourself of most of it's mechanics is just a downright shame.
18:30 sounds you didn't bother to explore the ninjustsus or even try any of your other options there's plenty of ways to even the playing field bloodsmoke is good for a group of enemies backstab 1 blind them with smoke and take out there others quickly or have puppeteer to get a temporary Ally to fight alongside you.You also have a whistle prosthetic to lure enemies away from the group and backstab them.The game gives you options you just don't use them.
As for the lone Shadow guy it's not that hard to take care of the ally with stealth kill him first and he want be a bother.
One problem was that he did the side paths before Genichiro lmao so he didn't have like any of the tools, Bloodsmoke helps so much later one but you get the from Genichiro
32:34 'HIS NAAAAAAAAAAAAAME! IS ON THE TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP LEFT CORNER OF YOUR SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Came to comment abt this too lmao clearly he didn’t die to him enough if he doesn’t know how to pronounce his name
Chained ogre was supposed to teach you 1) Some items are very strong on certain enemies, and you can learn what that is from clues in the game . 2) You can grapple some enemies, just like the dude on the horse or the first monke.
3) that jumps have can be used as long dodges
4) Fromsoft likes WWE
@@rocketappliances2160 that's my favorite thing I've learned so far
Maybe, but for how early it is in the game, it caused more harm than good imo.
This miniboss still confuses players more than it teaches them. At that point you've seen a miniboss who you have to fight the "Sekiro way" and a miniboss where the "Sekiro way" is pretty much useless. As a result the player has no idea what the game wants from him.
"I don't know how to pronounce his name so we're gonna call him Horseman"
this is a small moment, but really encapsulates a lot of the problems I and many others seem to have with your approach. You're so focused in on the point you're trying to make you're just ignoring things the game tells you right to your face. Whether its posture relating to health, the Chained Ogre's teaching moments about fire weak red eyes, eavesdropping, etc., or just Gyoubu telling you exactly how to pronounce his name.
Your values just differ from his, I don't care about minute details such as those you listed. My mindset is to focus on the purpose not every individual detail.
@@SixthAllicard minor details such as...the names of major characters? The point was that his problems often stem from just ignoring things the game directly tells him.
Also you do you dude?
@@Nocturne989 Factually that's not important but cool.
@@SixthAllicard me when I ignore how to play the game and then ragequit
@@blazing910 Your comment makes no sense.
This man completed Senpou Temple, Ashina Depths and Mibu Village before fighting Genichiro.
I love the shit out of this game and this is unheard of to me. I respect it.
@@grayestratmostly same here, had no idea i could have fought him the whole time lmao
@@grayestratidk who that is yet but i agree, genichiro took me less tries than most mini bosses, sick fight though
How do you get to mibu without gun fort key?
@@grayestrat I completely forgot about the bottomless hole I'm so used to getting to mibu through sunken valley
I almost did the same thing I basically went around to the back of genichro tower instead of going to the top, the entrance to the top can be easy to miss especially if you wanna run past that area due to the relatively tough enemies
I kinda disagree about the Isshin 4 phases being the artificial difficulty.
Because as long as there are many phases, the phases arent as long as for example 2 phases in owl father.
As long as youre aggressive against isshin, it should take you as long as owl father with 2 times less phases.
However his posture goes pretty fast, so it encourages you to be aggressive against him, cause otherwise its gonna last forever.
But I agree about the lightning reversal making the 4th phase easier, Isshin should be a little bit harder on that one
I mean idk. I'm prone to always mess up a lightning reversal. I have no idea why or how lol. But when you don't perfect them every time but you do go for the reversal every time, they feel more balanced. You lose so much health and are momentarily stunned so your cost is high if you mess them up.
I'll grant that maybe they should inflict less posture or give less stun time on the boss but I've also seen videos of people who would prefer to just dodge the lightning than go for the reversal. So idk. Maybe it's fine depending on the skill level of the player.
@@kyletrout3828 lightning reversal is easy, it doesn't matter when you get hit or when you deflect it just so long as you haven't touched the ground yet.
I always looked at is a genichiro being the "buy-in" for the right to fight ishinn. Ishinn fight being only the first 2 phases with the 3rd being a spectacle to finish the game and look cool
@@kyletrout3828In phase three I found that thing to be on higher ground than Isshin makes the lightning reversal timing easier
The thing is, Ishin is really just 2 phase with 2 moveset you need to learn. Genichiro is a boss you've beaten already, and he's much easier this time around since his mortal draw leaves his back open for attack. Isshin last phase is just his second one but with lightning, so it's easier. The only phases you need to learn is Isshin's first and second phase.
Tengu names you Sekiro then later Ishin calls you that first time you meet him if I remember correctly. It blew my mind, how clever it is
Never even noticed this. I have almost 1000 hours and I learn new things about the game everyday. Greatest game of all time
Also you can find Tengu’s outfit in his room hanging on the wall. I think he reveals a lot more when you offer him sake
Watching him complain about the corrupted monk's posture, while not doing any makiri counters on her, hurt my soul
He also said that using divine confetti (the stuff specifically made for ghost type enemies) would make you less skillful? Like the entire reason for the cobfetti being in the game is to give you an edge
@@eebydeeby03one legit criticism I can think of is that confetti at that point of the game in NG is a very limited consumable (so is snap seeds) and inventory hoarders (me, I’m so guilty of this) will not want to use it. Yes the high priest’s house give you a couple of confetti but that’s only good for a couple of tries.
@@eebydeeby03 Yeah, corrupted monk is in a similar ballpark as headless or shichimen warriors as in you need divine confetti if you don't want to die inside during the fight
Dude, you can defeat the chained ogre with fire, the blazing bull with firecrackers, and you can look for clues in your environment to make your entire run easier.
Using items is a part of the game, why would you not use them?
Because people(including me) dont like using a limited resource.
@@firmak2 then you're self imposing a harder challenge.
The game includes resource management
@@firmak2yeah that's just self handicapping.
Don't complain about difficulty if you're intentionally making it more difficult.
Use everything you have in order to win. It isn't going to destroy your playthrough in any way I promise.
@@Jimmymatthewb it is. Doesnt mean its not one of the hatdest souls game if not the hardest.
Almost every single point that's brought up in the video is flat out wrong. This guy contradicts himself over and over again sometime in one breath. It just doesn't sound like he knows what he talking about and isn't looking at the game logically but instead speaking from a place of deep butt hurt.
“BuT lInEaR gAmEs ArE uNrEpLaYaBlE!”.
Idiots who failed to recognize how Sekiro and DS3 are some of the games were I constantly see people reaching high NG+!
Like seriously, compare that to the likes of DeS or DS1 were people barely go past NG+1 or 2.
Good points overall but I disagree on some of the takes on the difficulty.
This game WAS hard but after dying multiple times to Lady Butterfly, a boss you can't steal kill the first bar of health, there and then I realized there are bosses that you have to face head on and high head strong - something in that moment clicked in me that the another way to play this game is to be to be a samurai - AGGRESSIVE!. From there on, I was able to be the SAMURAI and to be the SHINOBI and the game was on easy mode.
Fromsoft's game design signature is to make the game look almost impossible at face value (this is why a lot of players quit before they even get to 2nd encounter Genichiro) but the more you pick up the pace and gain more understanding the easier it gets. Part of the reason why you would see a lot of players say "I hope I can experience **Insert any Fromsoft game** for the first time again", as we humans yearn to crawl out from hardships and get to the goal only to miss the perseverance we have indulged by achieving what we want.
Having the learning process to be more punishing in Sekiro served a great purpose since there is no way out of there - only to well yeah... git gud. Jokes aside, I can see why they have to enforce this strictly as to the point it becomes punishing as they needed the players to be able assimilate the fighting mechanics as soon as possible. The game becomes much more entertaining and visually crafted by your own gameplay. The more grasp on the fighting mechanics the more animesque the game becomes. You use more prosthetics, you counter more, you squeeze attacks before the stagger animation from the enemy is completed. Look at Ongbal's Sekiro videos; the guy has extensive understanding of the fighting mechanics of the game that he is basically producing top level anime type content already lol.
Fromsoft tie in the connections of the player and the character with the parallels we feel both in fictional and reality approach. By the time you reach the endgame, You the player, and Wolf the shinobi has reached a mindset and skillset that is required to get you through there.
I feel like most of your opinions are made based on how you approached the game rather than seeing it in a objective perspective. You are the only one holding yourself back by not using what is on your arsenal, you refused or rather obstinate your gameplay by not engaging in one fundamental mechanics of the game. Most of the time the weakness of the enemy are revealed way before you fought them.
"I want the satisfaction of overcoming difficult odds". This is basically close to the Bushido code. Spoken like a true samurai! Fair. I do this too but you need to be able to switch in between, you can't just play Samurai style throughout the entire game without the element of Shinobi, and vice-versa. This is an equivalent of shooting yourself on the foot because as you said "Wolf is more like a samurai not a shinobi". It seems to me like you are speaking from your gameplay because on my gameplay Wolf is more a ninja. I stealth killed bosses' first health bar if I can because SHINOBIS DO NOT FIGHT FAIR.
Also, Finding COLLECTIBLES was not a problem for me since it is often hinted through the "in game text", there's also the "player messages" scattered throughout the world and as a player I am more of the explorer type to the point that I have developed an instinct in which I can sniff out these hidden collectibles lol. I got all gourd seeds on my first blind playthrough. The issue for me though is the utilization of the items you find throughout the game. I finished the game with the gazillion bozo items I got but I guess it's not just a Sekiro problem because almost every other game, not just from Fromsoft, have this problem.
Things to note, Sekiro was my first ever Fromsoft game that I played, so at that time I had no scope of reference of a soulslike to compare it to. I just went and dove deep with the only expectation that I will be playing a shinobi. I was the biggest fan of Arkham Series and when I saw this Sekiro was on sale on Steam and saw the stealth tag, I got it without knowing what "soulslike" is. All in all, Sekiro was my introduction to the one of the best genre in gaming. The soulslike.
definitely agree that they held themselves back. 100 hours on the game and don't know the value of consumables and Shinobi tools?? C'mon now. Also funny they said the beginning of the game is too hard but shit talks stealth. You're a Shinobi fighting large crowds of stronger ppl. Stealth is your equalizer, the game IS hard but not embracing aspects of the game that it clearly tells you about is gonna lead to a worse time
No mikiri counters and ever time he jumps over a red attack he doesn’t jump on there head for extra posture damage , feeling like a lot of this review is just you not having enough info or good use off all the mechanics the game offers
54:18 some bosses require you to get in a few hits, since the lower the vitality (HP) the slower posture will heal, this is also true for the player character (though you can accelerate posture recovery by holding down the block button)
since you already were at Ashina Castle at this point, I'm surprised you didn't pick up on this, since the sword wielding miniboss general is there to teach you that some enemies will have extremely good posture recovery, so in addition to deflecting you will need to attack aggressively as well, taking away as little as 30% of a bosses vitality will significantly slow down their posture recovery
@@highlightermarca-texto3281 well, once your mind sets on how you think the intended way is, it's often hard to change your method
if he enjoys playing it that way, it's cool, and since he already admitted he was wrong, I think all's fine
yeah he missed the fact that the miniboss in front of Ashina Castle with the 4 gunmen is a tutorial on posture recovery when vitality is low, but I think it's safe to say, that he has already read a comment that corrects him
When Sekiro says "One who opposes the Buddha?", I interpreted the way he said it as one of contemplation, like he was slowly repeating what the dying man was saying to try and deduce who "the one who opposes the Buddha" might mean. Especially since it ends up being someone he never mt before and only had an adjacent knowledge of as it was pointing at being the person causing the fog in the valley.
I never heard that line as meaning that Sekiro was taken aback by the idea of anyone ever daring to stray from or question or not believe in or be otherwise diametrically at odds with the principles of Buddhism. The way he repeated what the dying man was saying was very contemplative in delivery, the man being near death makes sense as to why Sekiro would vocalize his thoughts about finding the culprit with any other hints the dying Buddhist can give before he dies. But it seems like a contemplative statement where Wolf was solidifying the new lead in his mind by vocalizing it with slow, deliberate articulation and so the dying man can hear that Sekiro is indeed taking interest in pursuing the man's dying wish. H was trying to deduce the identity of the man through careful thought and allow for the mortally wounded man to be able to add any further leads, hints or contemplations of his own as easily as possible in such a state of death throes. The river noble village he was about to visit next was completely devoid of true Buddhists, as the village populous had all but completely abandoned the core tenets of Buddhism, wherein residents had rejected restraint from desire and excess, rejected the pursuit of self-improvement and they had absolutely rejected the idea of reincarnation by pursuing its polar opposite in pursuing the immortality of the rejuvenating waters. So considering Wolf is a Shinobi that is well acquainted with Ashina and its people, especially its biggest and most prolific areas like Mibu village and the Mibu Nobles, its likely that the Mibu may have been first to come to his mind as he rearticulated the hint the dying man gave about who was causing the fog was "One who opposes Buddha", it is very likely that Mibu came to mind first within Ashina.
And in less words:
Wolf said it out loud and thought deeply about who best fits the description as 'opposers of Buddha', and with the slow and deliberate vocal cadence of Wolf's words, it sounds like he is both in deep contemplation about the culprit, as well as deducing who the culprit indeed is. Wolf comes off as deeply contemplating the potential candidates based on the defining characteristic the dying man gave to wolf, but the slow and deliberate speed to the cadence makes it sound as though Wolf was in fact making that connection between the heretical abuse of the rejuvenating waters by the Mibu and the dying man's guidance that Wolf should seek out "One who opposes Buddha" and deducing that it is a Mibu noble who is in fact at fault for the depravity and illusions plaguing the valley they stand in.
Something i learned that i didnt expect to work is you can actually mikiri counter the purple shinobi's unblockable forward kick. Youre stoppin a kick by stompin down on their shin
A thrust is a thrust, and I will mikiri counter that shit either way
@Lemmon Boy so like hypothetically, if he were too pelvic thrust at me, would i then mikiro counter him by stomping on his dong? Sekiro CBT dlc when?
@@MrDark086 I mean, you're not wrong..
@@lemmonboy6459 Apart from that one BS attack from the seven spears guy which is clearly a thrust but the game doesn't allow mikiri on it.
@@lukew6725 you can mikiri counter it. It’s just really delayed
You saying ‘I dont wanna look up how to make the minibosses easy because then victory feels hollow’ paired with Tyrannicon cheesing a boss had me dying
sekiro is a game that broke me and I thought I would never be able to beat it. Beating the sword saint for the first time was probably the largest opium rushes I had In my life so far. It might have broken me but I came back stronger and prouder
Opium rush ?😂 dopamine?
About the first snake attack, what made you think it was an unfinished sequence?
And about Corrupted Monk, I'm pretty sure it was balanced to be a longer battle until you get her HP to half, which then stops any posture recovery. And since it's an illusion, you can use fire, snap seeds, firecrackers... It's not that bad at all.
Wait, Genichiro AFTER Corrupted Monk? That explains everything.
The second Corrupted Monk was only easier because you met it at the appropriate time. And still, the first fight was only phase 1 of the second fight, so it is mostly a new fight. It won't be easier for most people.
About the bosses making you feel like the boss through mastery, DMC5 does that and it feels incredible
Dmc5 combat is the most sleeper shit ever
This is definitely my favorite Fromsoft game without any doubt, and one of my favorite games of all time. Still hearing that you first time beat Genichiro hurts me because it took me 9 hours across three days.
I keep replaying and replaying the bossfights against Isshin, Genichiro and Owl. Especially Sword Saint Isshin is so damn enjoyable I can play that fight 10 times back to back at the idol. If this game had something like Chalice Dungeons I'd never quit playing.
The idea of a Berserk game playing as Guts made by From would be awesome. I don't even dare imagining it
Genichiro did the same for me, he really is the wakeup call. Before that point you could get by with dodging instead of parrying, but not him. You gotta learn the game and that took me wayyyy too long lmao
@noamias4897 genechiro took me 12 hours pesent
He beat him way later into the game than most people do. That's probably why. It took me a fuckin while to beat Genichiro but that was pretty much the moment I figured out how the game works and fell in love with it.
You can make your way up Ashina Castle from the inside to reach the Vilehand fight during the invasion and stealth-kill his buddy before either of them notice you. I actually don't know how you entered that fight from the outside roof. I had no idea it was possible.
It's funny. I feel like Sekiro came to me more naturally than any other FromSoft game. Despite repeated playthroughs I never managed to git gud at any entry except Sekiro, and I gitted real good.
It's crazy to me how you didn't learn gyoubu's name because he screams it at you when you enter
I feel like the chained ogre actually had a lot of utility in where it was placed. Firstly, as other comments pointed out, teaching you about the usefulness of eavesdropping and clue hunting, and also teaching you that the prosthetic tools are useful in combat. But I also want to add that the ogre teaches you that deflecting may be the main mechanic, but dodging is still just as important. A lesson that I feel comes in handy when going against the Ape and the Demon of hatred. This is something I don't actually hear very often in discussions surrounding the game
Except the orge will one shot you for any msitake and is about 10 hours or longer away from the ape or demon. With 10 or more bosses in between which rely heavily on parrying making it seem like a one off.
Your post would make a lot more sense if chained ogre was placed before ape or demon not at the start of the game
@@blinkyy1088 Nope, the placement makes perfect sense when you consider the 3rd boss it teaches you to handle which follows directly after it which is the brazen bull (which is also the boss that teaches you about status buildups a good while before they're relevant again) these monstrous bosses all act as their own subset that require unique approaches and sneaky use of your tools (finger whistle, firecrackers, umberdoodle etc)
In between both these fights you also contend the giant serpent and learn pretty quickly that you're meant to get the hell out of there an not fight further showing the player that sometimes a straight up battle is NOT the way to go. (Considering how you eventually handle the snake through stealth and tactics vs brute force and parrying feeds into this.)
They not only build up the same way all the standard swordfight bosses do towards isshin but they provide a massive amount of info about how to manipulate Sekiro's tools effectively. I absolutely agree with OP that this chain of bosses and the ramping of them mechanically all the way to DoH is slept on. He has the Ogre's aggression, the Snake's pure size and attacks that are best ran from vs dodged or blocked, and he has the exact status the brazen bull absolutely bullys you with the first time you enter its boss room
Corrupted monk is brilliant dude, one of the best bosses in the game. I like how the fight takes forever, it just gives me more time to enjoy the fight lol. On first playthrough though it can be a little frustrating because divine confetti is limited and you may not know at the time that you’re supposed to whittle down her hp before stacking posture damage. That being said if worse comes to worst you can cheese her and come back later when you’re more prepared.
you can farm divine confetti from the ashina samurai inside the castle.
@@Ghorda9 I know, I forgot, but that’s boring and repetitive
@@grimreefer213 you only need to go around two or three times to get enough with a balloon.
@@Ghorda9 Ehh I don’t know about that. From my experience the drop rate is pretty low, once you upgrade the senpou arts tree i’m sure it’s more common but you won’t have that at that point in the game. It depends on how many times you’re gonna die. Between corrupted monk and O’rin you could be dying a few dozen times depending on the player skill level. That’s a good amount of farming. But you don’t technically need divine confetti for corrupted monk, but if you don’t use it the fight will take quite a while which may be stressful for brand new players on the first playthrough.
@@grimreefer213 you don't need it for O'Rin and it's good practice to get a good feel for a boss before using any consumables.
Bro thinks this game has Naruto references lmaoooooo
You need to kill corrupted monk by doing health damage not posture damage, it’s obvious.
....no. The only fights where HP damage is more efficient would be the beast fights. And even then, the firecrackers could even it out a little.
Half right, it's both. The corrupted monk is just taking what the game teaches you when fighting Lady Butterfly (that posture recovery slows down based on their health damage) to it's logical conclusion. It's a single deathblow against an enemy with insane posture recovery, but the recovery becomes very manageable once you take 25%-50% of her total health away, depending on your skill level. Her leaping attacks are all very easy to dodge and get some decent health damage in, and you can use the mortal blade skill for some unblockable health damage as well.
@@MarkerMurker no, it’s 100x quicker to beat fake monk with hp damage.
When she is at 1/4 of his Health bar you can kill him with posture.
@@midastheunwise2423 yes you can kill her with posture if you did engouh damage.
@@ni9274”100x faster to kill it through health bar
“ at 1/4 hp you can get a posture kill “
Do you not realize these are two different things? They were talking about lowering the hp to 0, not to 25% for a posture kill
Funny to me that you had so much trouble with Corrupted Monk, then beat Genichiro first try-I usually tell people that Genichiro is the great equalizer-he forces you to learn how to play the game “properly”. Constant aggression, perfect parries, etc. and beating him makes most of the challenges of the rest of the game (final form Isshin excepted) FAR easier in comparison. Not only would Corrupted Monk have been easier by grinding your teeth on Gen, but Corrupted Monk is also, imo, a teaching moment of using items and prosthetics to help kill larger, high health enemies who are hard to have a straight up sword fight with.
So what do you do if you don't use prosthetics and items?
@@downsjmmyjones101 kill the monk? The game give’s you the items and equipments to use in a battle, you are not a Samurai, You are a Shinobi, fight to win, hesitation is Defeat.
You may like the game by lilting yourself, but if you take everything and use, you gonna love the gam. ;-;
@@downsjmmyjones101 deal health damage until their posture recovery is slow enough for you to win with deflects.
Now that you mentioned it, he probably struggled on the monk because he didn't fight genichiro first
He really is feeble. Sekiro is hard but damn man you make it sound like your first playthrough had bell demon and no kuro charm active. Lol love the videos tho dude keep em coming
He tried to beat fake monk with posture damage…
@@ni9274 It also seems like he didn't realize that posture regeneration was tied to health, for both him and the enemies, or that his posture would never break as long as he deflected an attack.
He also didn't mention the use of prosthetics at all, which combined with the prosthetic skills gives you so many more options to dynamically deal with boss combos, mechanics or level design.
Why did he never use prosthetics, I do not know.
@@common_undead He say he didn't used prosthetics and items to better understand the games mechanic, lmao.
He didn't even purchased miriki counter, and he did genichiro after fucking fake monk.
@@ni9274 That is such an absurd statement to me. The prosthetics are part of the core mechanics. They aren't like spells or certain weapons in souls games. There's no stat requirements, no fp, no weight limits, nothing.
The prosthetics and using them would also address his "complaint" of just running past enemies in the level, since its a good idea to kill them for the chance to drop spirit emblems, and because you can use the money you get to stock up on the emblems for the boss fights.
Like he fundamentally doesn't get the mechanics or design choices, but tries to "critique" them still.
Dark Souls players get filtered by Sekiro and make a 2hr long video explaining why they got filtered
I spent a while on corrupted monk but once someone told me use a divine confetti it was over
It's hard to take this seriously as a critique when many of your issues with the game stem from the fact that you did your first playthrough *completely* out of sequence, and also because you don't (appear) to use core tools like mikiri counters.
I mean, you complain about not having a boss early on to test you on deflection...because *you skipped Genichiro* and went to mibu village early. Then you complain about corrupted monk's posture regen...but in the footage, you're not even trying to do HP damage to slow the regen.